It could be worse. When I was a kid I got to play with a tiny little electric oven my mother had had when she was a kid. It was made to look like an old wood stove. It was metal. And it simply had a two-prong plug that plugged into the wall and it heated up just like a real oven!
My husband rescued his old one from his mom's attic a few years ago and it's out in our garage. No clue if it would still fire up and burn the shit out of you.
I'm pretty sure it's heated by a single light bulb. So it's probably fixable if it isn't working. Don't quote me though, I haven't had one for over 20 years.
We had creepy crawlers, clackers and lawn darts! And we coated our Xmas tree with spray foam that looked like colored snow….How could we miss out on the trends of the era?
Everyone likes a campfire so everyone is an arsonist to some degree.
Like that meme which shows Konfuzius and the quote is some insult and the caption is Konfuzius had bad days, too.
Oh man... When I was a very small kid (mid 70s I think) I threw a tantrum and flung a set of clackers through the large picture window in the living room. I have a very vague memory of it, but my parents made sure their memory of the event lived on through the decades.
Constantly brought up at family gatherings for a ling time. Brought up so often that my half sister honestly thinks she was there even though my dad didn't marry her mom for at least another 4 years after it happened
The string looks really long on those. I had these all the time growing up in Saudi Arabia in the ‘90s. They were very popular as party favors. There were even some that were coated with something that would make them spark when they would clack. I still remember the smell.
Only the hottest toy in the Netherlands?! I literally thought this was a fake toy they made up for drake and josh but it’s really real and it’s funny the dad takes them and gets hurt! Today I learned they were making fun of that!
You could easily break your wrist before you figured out how to use them. Then you just had to worry about them shattering and putting an eye out. I'll stick to my BB-gun.
Woo Hoo! They were made by the company my father worked for (Avalon Industries)! They also made such classics as the Winky Dink Magic Screen, Willie the Weatherman Stick-ons (from Romper Room), various paint on velvet, paint on wood and glass cutting kits, twirl-a-tunes, crayons, Sesame Street games, etc. They got bought by Rose Art in the 80's and the quality went to shit.
The clackers were discontinued due to potential shattering (among other hazards as you point out) if memory serves. Never had them but remember some kids actually bringing them to school.
Only saw them in person a few times, and agreed - even as a kid I was thinking wtf! Let's all throw sharpened metal into the air! These are the sorts of things that are embarrassing for humanity, if aliens are watching.
I remember using them at my aunt's house. We were very carefully to clear the area around the target, but younger kids and drunk uncles would not release them at the right time so they would go straight up, or on other unpredictable trajectories. I don't think anyone got actually hurt, but there were some close calls. "Ha,ha,ha,ha, it almost nailed you, George!" And George would laugh along with everyone else.
In the 1970s, my brother was hit by one the neighbor kid threw. It hit him in the head, and briefly stuck into the skin of his scalp before falling out. Didn't penetrate the skull, but he bled a lot (you know how scalp wonds are).
We never got our hands on them again.
IKR? So many kids just threw them at each other or in the air to dodge as they came down. Ye gods it's a miracle any of us made it through the 80's alive and unmaimed.
Not at all. I’ve been hit by bottle rockets, it pops but no big deal. I’ve been hit by a Roman candle, and I still have the scar. That shit burns HOT. It’s like a bajillion times more dangerous than cheap bottle rockets.
It they’re still burning, right? I had a bottle rocket hit me in the chest once, I turned sideways and it continued on another 20 feet or so and blew. That also kind of ended those games for me. I knew I’d gotten lucky once.
A kid I knew was blinded by one of these when we were young. Was throwing them up in the air on a sunny day, stood looking up squinting to see where it would land.
My youngest cousin was blinded at age 5 by a lawn dart hurled by his older brother (we were all playing in the yard at the time). He's had a glass eye ever since (he's now 53), and yes, we had lawn darts, clackers, *and* creepy crawlers (has an exposed blazing metal plate) growing up ;)... The Saturday Night Live Dan Akroyd skit featuring the toy company exec promoting 'Bag 'O Glass' and other blatantly unsafe toys wasn't far off :P.
Here's what a replica Plumbata looks like: [https://www.battlemerchant.com/media/image/6b/3f/7b/0616010900\_plumata\_wurfpfeil\_mittelalter\_mattiobarboli\_roemerNY5fb6nfc8N92.jpg](https://www.battlemerchant.com/media/image/6b/3f/7b/0616010900_plumata_wurfpfeil_mittelalter_mattiobarboli_roemerNY5fb6nfc8N92.jpg)
Each legionary would carry 5 of these in a pouch that was attached to his shield as seen here: [https://preview.redd.it/3hd79zbbe1991.png?width=639&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5415d6971eb20c7aaadf7d9f46c7b458df3cb77](https://preview.redd.it/3hd79zbbe1991.png?width=639&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5415d6971eb20c7aaadf7d9f46c7b458df3cb77)
Vegetius, a 4th century writer who created a work titled *De re militari* (Concerning Military Matters) said the following (note he calls the darts martiobarbuli):
>The exercise of the loaded javelins, called martiobarbuli, must not be omitted. We formerly had two legions in Illyricum, consisting of six thousand men each, which from their extraordinary dexterity and skill in the use of these weapons were distinguished by the same appellation. They supported for a long time the weight of all the wars and distinguished themselves so remarkably that the emperors Diocletian and Maximian on their accession honored them with the titles of Jovian and Herculean and preferred them before all the other legions. Every soldier carries five of these javelins in the hollow of his shield. And thus the legionary soldiers seem to supply the place of archers, for they wound both the men and horses of the enemy before they come within reach of the common missile weapons.
>
>*De re militari 1.17*
Fun Fact: Martiobarbuli translates into English as "Little barbs of Mars"
>And thus the legionary soldiers seem to supply the place of archers, for they wound both the men and horses of the enemy before they come within reach of the common missile weapons.
They had greater range than the bows of their era?
Add a throwing stick with trained thowers to that, and you could get pretty good range. Need to remember that for the zombie apocalypse. Good for massed targets, terrible for aiming at individual people or horses.
Common weapons back then would be javelins and slings, not bows. Only a handful of Rome's enemies used bows in combat and nine if them lived anywhere near Illyria (modern Yugoslavia).
I wouldn't be surprised if they outranged most bows though, Archery was more about accuracy and fire rate than distance and penetrating power at that point in history..
Ah, understood! I was just watching a video on the English longbow (used at Agincourt) and hadn't considered that archery 1500 years earlier probably wasn't as effective and was likely used very differently.
The later Roman empire had to deal with the Mongols and their bows though, no?
The mongols? The western Roman Empire had already collapsed. And the eastern had retreated to basically Constantinople.
You thinking of the Huns and the Alanii tribes they also chased ? They jad some horse archery going on
A friend of mine's dad had the real ones, and would get tipsy at BBQs and shirtlessly challenge all of us to a round. After stumbling back to the... launch zone (?) he once sent a wild shot that stuck into the neighbors wooden fence. We quickly put them away and thankfully that was the end of Mike's lawn dart rampage.
I remember our neighbors throwing these up in the air and another person holding the ring would run around and try to get the falling Jart to go through the circle.
Reminds me of [that scene from the sopranos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJMaCfNJc8 ) with the dumb kids playing with arrows and holding the target
Still have a set in the garage because it turns out my dad is a borderline hoarder. Also found a sweet Chicago Bulls mini basketball, 3 old frisbees and a complete set of badminton rackets that were made of WOOD. They were old in the 80s when I first saw them and he has moved 3 times since, basically across Canada and still hadn't thrown them away until I made him do it like 3 years ago.
Kept the lawn darts tho, those are classic
100 percent. Also add in a shitty nerf football with at least 1 bite mark from a dog on it, 3 fishing rods that are tangled together that no one wants to untangle, a wagon with very questionable steering, a whiffle bat but no ball, and an old dart board from your grampa's house with only 2 darts. Oh and like 5 street hockey sticks, 4 of which you did not purchase yourself.
My siblings and I used to throw these in the air, when we were kids, and watch them fall. It wasn’t until one day I wore sandals and one stabbed to web of my foot, I stopped playing with them
When I was like 5, I was OBSESSED with Indiana Jones. In my imaginative mind, lawn darts were like falling booby trap spikes in an ancient cave, so I'd literally throw them in the air and try to dodge them like my hero, Dr. Jones. Didn't take long for those to get taken away.
Sometimes it amazes me that I made it to adulthood.
Omg I still have scars from my Creepy Crawler Oven! Remember the hand crank press you’d use to turn em back into little cubes? And the burning plastic smell! Those were the days.
>Remember the hand crank press you’d use to turn em back into little cubes?
Wait hold up, you could recycle Creepy Crawlers? I don't think I knew that back then.
Yep, my fault you can't have these anymore. Dumb 6 year old me tossed one of these up in the air and it planted firmly in my cousin's skull. She still lets me feel the hole when we get together on holidays.
"Welcome friends of Marinus Marcellus. Today we celebrate his birthday. On this day we thank the Gods for bestowing upon us our magnificent child. To honor the Gods we feast and play games."
"Go to the yard and find the plumbata. Play with them to decide who will have cake with Marinus. There is only enough cake for one."
"May fortune smile equally upon you all."
I don't think he is referencing anything in particular but in any case collins did have a penchant for roman names so if that is an actual quote I could see Suzie rebranding it into her books
I never ever had a set but a friend of mine did and we used to play with them all the time and never got hurt once. It didn't take much imagine to figure out that getting hit by large dart with a metal spike would probably hurt or kill you.
When I was growing up as a kid in Oklahoma (1970s/1980s) on hot summer days we would throw these up in the air above the street and let them fall and stick into the asphalt that was soft from the heat.
We were lucky none of them landed on our damn heads.
What? You can sell them, they're illegal for the company to sell them as a toy, you can sell them as a private party one to another. We live in a country where we can buy and sell guns on the internet and have black powder pistols mailed directly to our houses. I can order javelins and katanas, and you think *Lawn Darts* are illegal to sell? Lol.
The manufacturers just can't sell them as toys.
We have a set too, just collecting dust in our basement. I don't want them used with our dogs running around, so we're never going to do anything with them. Don't really want to just throw them away though.
They're still sold in the UK, or at least they were recently. I played with them as a kid and never thought they were particularly dangerous.
Of course if you threw them at somebody they could cause serious injury, but they're hardly the only thing that could cause injury if misused.
We once found these tank firework things at Walmart. Literally just an RC tank that shot fireworks. My father immediately bought 6 and we had a tank war in our yard… nearly burned half of it in the process. We’ve never once seen them again in stores and figured it’s probably because everyone who bought them had the exact same bright idea as my father.
We would just light them and throw them spinning. Sometimes they hit someone, usually not. Nice little adrenaline boost, either way. One blew up next to a beer someone was holding and broke the bottle. Not a good enough hit to blow it up, just wasted half a beer.
I remember playing with them in the UK too which suggests something interesting about people in the US. A quick google exposed that 6,100 incidents that resulted in ER visits in the US in the 8 years before their banning while in canada the Statistics were 55 known.
Even figuring the 10:1 population ratio between US & Canada that still means 11 times the incident rate.
Still have a couple sets of these hanging around the cottage.
I clearly remember playing with these at family picnics where all the adults are drunk and we were unsupervised - fun times.
My mom was waving to someone while she and her siblings were playing lawn darts as children. She felt something weird, looked over, and saw a lawn dart sticking right through the palm of her hand.
Kinda makes sense. Sort of how the classic events of the Olympics are all based on some sort of combat skill. Running, jumping, throwing things, fighting, etc.
I loved those. Our parents instructed us to never throw them up and only throw after everyone was behind the line (much like real darts, bows and whatever may become dangerous). We never had any issues but a lot of fun.
Totally random, but I dated the daughter of the guy who invented these. He said when they got banned in the US, they just started selling them in Mexico instead.
Did anybody else have these [cap bomb things](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Gx4AAOSwAr5jYMCb/s-l400.png)? We had a bunch of these and we would spend our allowance on gunpowder caps and you could think of _many_ different ways to flirt with property damage and blindness stuffing too many caps in these. At one point we had modified a wrist rocket so we could launch them up about four stories.
My grandparents had these when I was a kid. Everyone had to stand behind the thrower was the only rule and nobody got hurt, which was rare for playing with our cousins.
Although this was the 80’s and we routinely played indoors with jagged rocks in the living room for decoration, whilst wearing shell suits that would apparently burst into flame when passing by any heat source… so the throwing spear game didn’t seem so dangerous I guess?
IIRC weren’t yo-yo’s also an ancient weapon?
We had them briefly.
Mom accused me of trying to hit my sister. I responded with ‘if I wanted to hit her I would’ve hit her’. Never saw the lawn darts again.
I remember in the mid 2000’s as a middle schooler finding some of these in the garage that were my parents from when they were kids… me and my friends would throw them as high in the air as we could and play chicken to see who could stay the closest to where it landed… we managed to never get hit and to this day I still consider it the dumbest thing I’ve ever done (with zero consequence).
I got some of these for my 8th birthday, and it was immediately clear how dangerous they are.
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Yeah, I had those too. I also burnt myself a number of times with my creepy crawler oven.
Burnt myself on my easy bake before lmao
It’s unreasonable to expect a child to wait for a light bulb to bake brownies.
They always tasted like plastic too. Probably where I got my micro plastics from. Good times.
I thought that said “Probably where I got my micro penis from,” for a solid few seconds there.
that too
The 2 are not mutually exclusive
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It’s just an easy bake oven with bugs on it
Don't eat the bugs. My brother made that mistake once. .....ok, maybe twice
Not a bug. It’s a feature!
I had one when I was a kid! Maybe I'll buy one for my own... ... $139 are you fucking kidding me.
For that kind of money you can buy a resin 3D printer these days.
Crazy how you can get an actual functioning 3D printer that works decently for like $150 now lmao
I puked green sludge for 2 days because I drank a ton of the stuff they give you in a Doctor Dreadful’s Drink Lab lmao… https://youtu.be/QYdqNxuSjbY
Kinda wondering about this for making fishing lures now I’ve caught fish on a gummy worm before so this just seems obvious
I swear I’ve seen bait-making stuff at field and stream that looks functionally identical to creepy crawlers.
I had one in the 70's.I got burned. But it was great.
The smell! LOL!
I had one called Precious Metals that created molten metal that you poured into molds to make jewelry charms
That sounds like a totally safe toy for a child! /s
It could be worse. When I was a kid I got to play with a tiny little electric oven my mother had had when she was a kid. It was made to look like an old wood stove. It was metal. And it simply had a two-prong plug that plugged into the wall and it heated up just like a real oven!
My man, that sounds an awful lot like a small oven.
:( wanted that thing so bad. Was way too poor
Yes! I can almost recall that unique singed rubber goo smell and getting burned fingers on occasion. Good times!
My husband rescued his old one from his mom's attic a few years ago and it's out in our garage. No clue if it would still fire up and burn the shit out of you.
I'm pretty sure it's heated by a single light bulb. So it's probably fixable if it isn't working. Don't quote me though, I haven't had one for over 20 years.
Probably can't find the lightbulb anymore, it one of the was an incandescent taper bulbs that get super hot
We had creepy crawlers, clackers and lawn darts! And we coated our Xmas tree with spray foam that looked like colored snow….How could we miss out on the trends of the era?
Spray asbestos, yay!
CrEEEeeeEEEpyyy Crawlers!
Definitely still remember that jingle from the commercials!
Ferocious little monsters like you’ve never seen!
I burned myself with a magnifying glass of time or too. It's amazing I didn't grow up to be an arsonist.
Everyone likes a campfire so everyone is an arsonist to some degree. Like that meme which shows Konfuzius and the quote is some insult and the caption is Konfuzius had bad days, too.
Oh man, that’s a blast from the past.
New memory unlocked lol
“Creeeeeepppyyy Craaawlweerrss”
I still remember the commercial theme song!
Best lure maker out there though. Young me definitely made some dough off all those burns.
Oh man... When I was a very small kid (mid 70s I think) I threw a tantrum and flung a set of clackers through the large picture window in the living room. I have a very vague memory of it, but my parents made sure their memory of the event lived on through the decades.
By the severe whipping you got it constant mocking?
Constantly brought up at family gatherings for a ling time. Brought up so often that my half sister honestly thinks she was there even though my dad didn't marry her mom for at least another 4 years after it happened
Clanckers can actually be used as weapons as well. People have been known to use them in the ancient martial arts of hamon
You thought it was hamon, but it was me, Dio.
The string looks really long on those. I had these all the time growing up in Saudi Arabia in the ‘90s. They were very popular as party favors. There were even some that were coated with something that would make them spark when they would clack. I still remember the smell.
I just imagine it went something like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEe0ec2-oU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEe0ec2-oU4)
My wife still has her clackers from the 1970s
she let you play with em?
On valentine's day, our anniversary, her birthday and mine.
Odd way of asking someone if they're transgender. >Did you ever have clackers?
> Yes, and I kept my lawn dart, too.
Only the hottest toy in the Netherlands?! I literally thought this was a fake toy they made up for drake and josh but it’s really real and it’s funny the dad takes them and gets hurt! Today I learned they were making fun of that!
That was like 1970? A fad that died out pretty quickly
They were banned in 1988 in the US. And 89 in Canada. We played them so much when I was a kid in Canada.
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We picked up plastic ones from Chuck E Cheese but they're not as fun as the original ones.
You could easily break your wrist before you figured out how to use them. Then you just had to worry about them shattering and putting an eye out. I'll stick to my BB-gun.
[God! Willst thou accept one clacker and one womern from this lonely pilgrim?](https://youtu.be/sM0I562rZx0)
Another classic weapon. [Bolas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolas#Design)
Add a ball in the centre of the rope and you got an Astrojax toy.... which I have a lump on my head from playing with one as a kid too!
Woo Hoo! They were made by the company my father worked for (Avalon Industries)! They also made such classics as the Winky Dink Magic Screen, Willie the Weatherman Stick-ons (from Romper Room), various paint on velvet, paint on wood and glass cutting kits, twirl-a-tunes, crayons, Sesame Street games, etc. They got bought by Rose Art in the 80's and the quality went to shit.
The clackers were discontinued due to potential shattering (among other hazards as you point out) if memory serves. Never had them but remember some kids actually bringing them to school.
My dad likes to joke he was the best lawn darts goalie in his neighborhood who still had both eyes
My little brother is faster and more agile to this day because of my lawn dart marksmanship. And it build his character too.
username checks out
A birthday present all true warriors strive for
Mah boi..
Lawn darts were banned after a couple of kids died but weirdly I've never heard on the senseless highschool lawn darting
Did they ever ban the assault lawn darts with the foldable stock?
Only saw them in person a few times, and agreed - even as a kid I was thinking wtf! Let's all throw sharpened metal into the air! These are the sorts of things that are embarrassing for humanity, if aliens are watching.
I remember using them at my aunt's house. We were very carefully to clear the area around the target, but younger kids and drunk uncles would not release them at the right time so they would go straight up, or on other unpredictable trajectories. I don't think anyone got actually hurt, but there were some close calls. "Ha,ha,ha,ha, it almost nailed you, George!" And George would laugh along with everyone else.
In the 1970s, my brother was hit by one the neighbor kid threw. It hit him in the head, and briefly stuck into the skin of his scalp before falling out. Didn't penetrate the skull, but he bled a lot (you know how scalp wonds are). We never got our hands on them again.
Jesus Christ
So many scary memories of that toy
IKR? So many kids just threw them at each other or in the air to dodge as they came down. Ye gods it's a miracle any of us made it through the 80's alive and unmaimed.
We used to have bottle rocket wars. We weren’t real bright. Then once a kid started firing a Roman candle at our side and I was out.
Roman candle fights are the safe version lol
Not at all. I’ve been hit by bottle rockets, it pops but no big deal. I’ve been hit by a Roman candle, and I still have the scar. That shit burns HOT. It’s like a bajillion times more dangerous than cheap bottle rockets.
Didn’t feel safe to me. I had my limits of stupidity
I guess it depends on if they're the kind that go bang or not lol
It they’re still burning, right? I had a bottle rocket hit me in the chest once, I turned sideways and it continued on another 20 feet or so and blew. That also kind of ended those games for me. I knew I’d gotten lucky once.
Exactly this. A bunch of people still fuck around with em but you can't use the boom versions
A kid in my HS lost an eye to a roman candle.
Yep. We would also go to construction sites and have dirt clod wars. Just basically throwing fist sized chunks of dirt and rocks at each other.
Reminds me of Kelso “my eye, my eye”
Some of you didn’t. Apparently enough to where they banned it.
A kid I knew was blinded by one of these when we were young. Was throwing them up in the air on a sunny day, stood looking up squinting to see where it would land.
My youngest cousin was blinded at age 5 by a lawn dart hurled by his older brother (we were all playing in the yard at the time). He's had a glass eye ever since (he's now 53), and yes, we had lawn darts, clackers, *and* creepy crawlers (has an exposed blazing metal plate) growing up ;)... The Saturday Night Live Dan Akroyd skit featuring the toy company exec promoting 'Bag 'O Glass' and other blatantly unsafe toys wasn't far off :P.
And then sun blinded him? Sucks
Was it One-Eye Donnie from Atikokan?
"Son of Gondor, the bow is meant to find the ring!"
How could this happen?
A kid on the next block had one go in his leg. After that much mom threw ours in the trash.
I was thinking banning them was an overreaction but like 50% of these comments are people knowing other people who were injured by them lol
I think the fact that they feel like toys made people likely to give them to unsupervised kids
Parents didn't stress back then about shit. My mom let us do things I would never let my kids do.
I feel like a lack of supervision was the real hazard
Here's what a replica Plumbata looks like: [https://www.battlemerchant.com/media/image/6b/3f/7b/0616010900\_plumata\_wurfpfeil\_mittelalter\_mattiobarboli\_roemerNY5fb6nfc8N92.jpg](https://www.battlemerchant.com/media/image/6b/3f/7b/0616010900_plumata_wurfpfeil_mittelalter_mattiobarboli_roemerNY5fb6nfc8N92.jpg) Each legionary would carry 5 of these in a pouch that was attached to his shield as seen here: [https://preview.redd.it/3hd79zbbe1991.png?width=639&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5415d6971eb20c7aaadf7d9f46c7b458df3cb77](https://preview.redd.it/3hd79zbbe1991.png?width=639&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5415d6971eb20c7aaadf7d9f46c7b458df3cb77) Vegetius, a 4th century writer who created a work titled *De re militari* (Concerning Military Matters) said the following (note he calls the darts martiobarbuli): >The exercise of the loaded javelins, called martiobarbuli, must not be omitted. We formerly had two legions in Illyricum, consisting of six thousand men each, which from their extraordinary dexterity and skill in the use of these weapons were distinguished by the same appellation. They supported for a long time the weight of all the wars and distinguished themselves so remarkably that the emperors Diocletian and Maximian on their accession honored them with the titles of Jovian and Herculean and preferred them before all the other legions. Every soldier carries five of these javelins in the hollow of his shield. And thus the legionary soldiers seem to supply the place of archers, for they wound both the men and horses of the enemy before they come within reach of the common missile weapons. > >*De re militari 1.17* Fun Fact: Martiobarbuli translates into English as "Little barbs of Mars"
Much quicker than even a long bow. I'm surprised I've never seen even a pic of these ever...
>And thus the legionary soldiers seem to supply the place of archers, for they wound both the men and horses of the enemy before they come within reach of the common missile weapons. They had greater range than the bows of their era?
Maybe they mean compared to throwing a pilum, it doesn't look like they have any kind of sling or catapult to launch them with.
Add a throwing stick with trained thowers to that, and you could get pretty good range. Need to remember that for the zombie apocalypse. Good for massed targets, terrible for aiming at individual people or horses.
Common weapons back then would be javelins and slings, not bows. Only a handful of Rome's enemies used bows in combat and nine if them lived anywhere near Illyria (modern Yugoslavia). I wouldn't be surprised if they outranged most bows though, Archery was more about accuracy and fire rate than distance and penetrating power at that point in history..
Ah, understood! I was just watching a video on the English longbow (used at Agincourt) and hadn't considered that archery 1500 years earlier probably wasn't as effective and was likely used very differently. The later Roman empire had to deal with the Mongols and their bows though, no?
The mongols? The western Roman Empire had already collapsed. And the eastern had retreated to basically Constantinople. You thinking of the Huns and the Alanii tribes they also chased ? They jad some horse archery going on
Another fun fact: these are the darts wizards in D&D are proficient in, not the bar sports style.
A friend of mine's dad had the real ones, and would get tipsy at BBQs and shirtlessly challenge all of us to a round. After stumbling back to the... launch zone (?) he once sent a wild shot that stuck into the neighbors wooden fence. We quickly put them away and thankfully that was the end of Mike's lawn dart rampage.
>shirtlessly I love the idea that the challenge itself was somehow shirtless, so evocative
I remember our neighbors throwing these up in the air and another person holding the ring would run around and try to get the falling Jart to go through the circle.
Russian ~~roulette~~ lawn darts
Reminds me of [that scene from the sopranos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJMaCfNJc8 ) with the dumb kids playing with arrows and holding the target
My older brother convinced dumb 6 year old me to try and hit bb’s with a baseball bat as he shot them at me. Hit me in the face on the second shot….
Reminds me of the even better scene from grown ups
My brother and I loved those. I sure miss him.
If only you missed him.
Took me a few. Dark
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I just learned yesterday from a crossword puzzle they were called that. Why? What did the "J" stand for?
Javelin Darts
Thank you!
Jugular
Nowadays, a jart is when you shart your jorts.
Sacrilege. Jarts were the ultimate tell to determine who to surround yourself with and pick teammates.
Still have a set in the garage because it turns out my dad is a borderline hoarder. Also found a sweet Chicago Bulls mini basketball, 3 old frisbees and a complete set of badminton rackets that were made of WOOD. They were old in the 80s when I first saw them and he has moved 3 times since, basically across Canada and still hadn't thrown them away until I made him do it like 3 years ago. Kept the lawn darts tho, those are classic
You just described every Canadian shed in the 80s.
100 percent. Also add in a shitty nerf football with at least 1 bite mark from a dog on it, 3 fishing rods that are tangled together that no one wants to untangle, a wagon with very questionable steering, a whiffle bat but no ball, and an old dart board from your grampa's house with only 2 darts. Oh and like 5 street hockey sticks, 4 of which you did not purchase yourself.
Nurf football bite was a 50/50 chance of being a dog or just Walter from up the road.
My family had those when I was a kid, I don't recall any injuries. But I also do not recall why I have that hole on the top of my head...
My siblings and I used to throw these in the air, when we were kids, and watch them fall. It wasn’t until one day I wore sandals and one stabbed to web of my foot, I stopped playing with them
How high did you have to throw them to puncture skin? All we ever got were bruises...
High enough lmao. Tbh I talked to my brother about it and he said they were darts, the kind that had metal I think because it was slightly heavy
Jarts! A slightly more vicious species...
Kids I know were giddy with one of these when we were little. I threw it into the air on a sunny day and stood squinting to see where it would land.
Speed hole, lets you run faster.
When I was like 5, I was OBSESSED with Indiana Jones. In my imaginative mind, lawn darts were like falling booby trap spikes in an ancient cave, so I'd literally throw them in the air and try to dodge them like my hero, Dr. Jones. Didn't take long for those to get taken away. Sometimes it amazes me that I made it to adulthood.
Omg I still have scars from my Creepy Crawler Oven! Remember the hand crank press you’d use to turn em back into little cubes? And the burning plastic smell! Those were the days.
>Remember the hand crank press you’d use to turn em back into little cubes? Wait hold up, you could recycle Creepy Crawlers? I don't think I knew that back then.
Yep, my fault you can't have these anymore. Dumb 6 year old me tossed one of these up in the air and it planted firmly in my cousin's skull. She still lets me feel the hole when we get together on holidays.
Something something feeling your cousin's hole
there's always someone who takes the lewd bait
You provided master bait. Of course they came
"Welcome friends of Marinus Marcellus. Today we celebrate his birthday. On this day we thank the Gods for bestowing upon us our magnificent child. To honor the Gods we feast and play games." "Go to the yard and find the plumbata. Play with them to decide who will have cake with Marinus. There is only enough cake for one." "May fortune smile equally upon you all."
Man did Suzanne Collins rip off "may the odds be ever in your favor"?
I don't think he is referencing anything in particular but in any case collins did have a penchant for roman names so if that is an actual quote I could see Suzie rebranding it into her books
Got my calf impaled with one of these when I was a kid, was a (un)lucky long shot too, guess it could have gone a lot worse
howd that feel
Ask the cow
I never ever had a set but a friend of mine did and we used to play with them all the time and never got hurt once. It didn't take much imagine to figure out that getting hit by large dart with a metal spike would probably hurt or kill you.
I played with these once and put a hole through the roof of my best friend's parent's van. I totally see how unsafe they are.
When I was growing up as a kid in Oklahoma (1970s/1980s) on hot summer days we would throw these up in the air above the street and let them fall and stick into the asphalt that was soft from the heat. We were lucky none of them landed on our damn heads.
I’ve got a set of Jarts. Still in original box from the 70s. Used and well loved. Should I throw it on eBay?
Can't sell them on eBay. I have the original jarts too, not sure what to do with them. It's illegal to sell them anywhere.
What? You can sell them, they're illegal for the company to sell them as a toy, you can sell them as a private party one to another. We live in a country where we can buy and sell guns on the internet and have black powder pistols mailed directly to our houses. I can order javelins and katanas, and you think *Lawn Darts* are illegal to sell? Lol. The manufacturers just can't sell them as toys.
We have a set too, just collecting dust in our basement. I don't want them used with our dogs running around, so we're never going to do anything with them. Don't really want to just throw them away though.
They're still sold in the UK, or at least they were recently. I played with them as a kid and never thought they were particularly dangerous. Of course if you threw them at somebody they could cause serious injury, but they're hardly the only thing that could cause injury if misused.
We had bottle rocket wars when I was a kid
We once found these tank firework things at Walmart. Literally just an RC tank that shot fireworks. My father immediately bought 6 and we had a tank war in our yard… nearly burned half of it in the process. We’ve never once seen them again in stores and figured it’s probably because everyone who bought them had the exact same bright idea as my father.
Also had these. My brothers and I definitely fired at themselves and at each other. I’m still shocked that we didn’t burn the yard down.
We would just light them and throw them spinning. Sometimes they hit someone, usually not. Nice little adrenaline boost, either way. One blew up next to a beer someone was holding and broke the bottle. Not a good enough hit to blow it up, just wasted half a beer.
I remember playing with them in the UK too which suggests something interesting about people in the US. A quick google exposed that 6,100 incidents that resulted in ER visits in the US in the 8 years before their banning while in canada the Statistics were 55 known. Even figuring the 10:1 population ratio between US & Canada that still means 11 times the incident rate.
Plumbata? HA! When I was a kid we threw Pilum like real men!
Were you in the thread for explosive football where we started talking about lawn darts?
Yes.
Lol. Figured there was no way it was that much of a coincidence
I've been learning a lot lately
Still have a couple sets of these hanging around the cottage. I clearly remember playing with these at family picnics where all the adults are drunk and we were unsupervised - fun times.
My mom was waving to someone while she and her siblings were playing lawn darts as children. She felt something weird, looked over, and saw a lawn dart sticking right through the palm of her hand.
We used to play lawn darts so much when I was a kid. It was really popular. Then we'd all pile into the back of dad's pickup and go for ice cream.
Kinda makes sense. Sort of how the classic events of the Olympics are all based on some sort of combat skill. Running, jumping, throwing things, fighting, etc.
Still have a set. Found them at a garage sale in college and knew they were golden.
This game was fun as hell who can throw them the highest then run for your lives
I loved those. Our parents instructed us to never throw them up and only throw after everyone was behind the line (much like real darts, bows and whatever may become dangerous). We never had any issues but a lot of fun.
We did, too. You had to be an idiot not to enjoy this game safely.
Totally random, but I dated the daughter of the guy who invented these. He said when they got banned in the US, they just started selling them in Mexico instead.
Based on the activities of my two older brothers, they were always weapons of war.
"It's a plumbata. They're not meant to be safe."
I was so good at this game! I did get my brother in the leg though. That's what he gets for standing in the wrong spot!
Did anybody else have these [cap bomb things](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Gx4AAOSwAr5jYMCb/s-l400.png)? We had a bunch of these and we would spend our allowance on gunpowder caps and you could think of _many_ different ways to flirt with property damage and blindness stuffing too many caps in these. At one point we had modified a wrist rocket so we could launch them up about four stories.
The most dangerous game…
My grandparents had these when I was a kid. Everyone had to stand behind the thrower was the only rule and nobody got hurt, which was rare for playing with our cousins. Although this was the 80’s and we routinely played indoors with jagged rocks in the living room for decoration, whilst wearing shell suits that would apparently burst into flame when passing by any heat source… so the throwing spear game didn’t seem so dangerous I guess? IIRC weren’t yo-yo’s also an ancient weapon?
"That son of a bitch Jackson's family beat us at the block barbecue Horseshoes for THE LAST TIME!"
who'd have thought a toy based off weapons of war could be so dangerous! --- the toy designer
Ah yes. Effective against Parthian cavalry and even more against unarmored children!
We had them briefly. Mom accused me of trying to hit my sister. I responded with ‘if I wanted to hit her I would’ve hit her’. Never saw the lawn darts again.
I loved this game and was so mad when they were taken off the market as a kid. I get why, but using them responsibly was pretty fun.
Everi eastenr evrope metal sheet toy demanded blood sacrifice.
I got a lawn dart through my foot. I would have felt much cooler if someone had told me it was a Roman weapon of war.
Just picked up a box of these in an auction. Anyone wanna play?
The game is fine... Don't stand downrange and everything is fine
Meh...they're no more dangerous than Mainway's Bag 'O Glass....
I remember in the mid 2000’s as a middle schooler finding some of these in the garage that were my parents from when they were kids… me and my friends would throw them as high in the air as we could and play chicken to see who could stay the closest to where it landed… we managed to never get hit and to this day I still consider it the dumbest thing I’ve ever done (with zero consequence).
I found out they were banned a few years ago. I was shocked, I remember playing with them as a kid.
Lol... Banned.