The original Green Machine was axed because it had the tendency to flip when under hard breaking and controls jammed to one side.... shi@t I thought that was the whole POINT of the thing.
I just remembered a home cotton candy machine I had as a kid. Hot enough to melt the sugar and then spin it out (just like the big ones at the carnival). Again, I was smart enough NOT to lick the damn thing while it was hot.
I also had a "Chef Boy-Ar-Dee" Pizza oven. It used two 75 watt bulbs to cook pizzas you either made from the included ingredients, or a frozen personal-sized pizza.
Never burned down the house, never burned myself, etc. Today's kids must just be STUPID.
I saw the power of the "Jart out of control" at a party back in the day. If one gets thrown high enough to go over an electric wire(18 feet or so) it can and will penetrate the hood of a 1971 Camaro, up to the weighted part. I was pissed, but there was no suing anybody, it was just another drunken slippery fingered happening. It was easy to see how it could puncture a body part in a hurry! When the party was over, we just got our drunken asses in our cars and drove home!
I recall having a BB gun, a sling shot, lots of rocks to throw, matches, fire crackers, M80's(the real kind), shit me and my pre-teen friends all carried pocket knives our dads bought for us, we were expected to keep them sharp in shop class at school!
M-80s, Cherry bombs, matches and gasoline, firecrackers in the gas tank, cherry bombs and the desinegrating coffee cans, now that always got the attention of the neighborhood kids, I remember after the thing going off(set by my friends older brother) and picking coffee can pieces out of the side of the same garage that the matches and gasoline were experimented with.
Makes you wonder why your mother always worried about you getting run over by a car when you crossed the street. There probably wouldn't have been any investigative reporting on channel 4 news in Detroit if someone would have caught a piece of shrapnel, we would have pulled it out and hid it from or parents the best we could, except for the sissy kid down the street, you know the one, "Whats the magic word?" he would quote Milky the clown.
I had explosive "Jarts" before Jarts were invented. 12 gauge shotgun shell,open the crimp then close the crimp on two big chicken feathers,tape a marble centered on the primer and throw it as high as you could to land on a hard surface.................bang! Shot would go up about 30 feet and rain back down.
How about Chemistry sets, they even had mercury in them and who bothered to read the included "experiments". Had a lead molding set that came with lead, a ladle and a burner hot enough to melt the lead to make little lead soldiers. I had a working, black powder cannon that would shoot cannon balls made from my lead molding kit.
Again, I have to wonder, how could we have possibly survived all this? In today's reality all our parents would be millionaires by now from all the law suits they'd have won!
You sure couldn't be a softy growing up when we did!!
Anybody ever launched Estes Rockets? We used to. The guys got brave and started to just ignite the engines, them things once ignited went everywhere, we ran like crazy K
m-80 powered homemade "potato" gun. (or whatever else would fit the current design), bottle rocket fights, fyi- hiding in a garage filled with open cans and jars of various petroleum based products will definately irritate a friends father when he sees explosives being tossed into his "hobby shop". damhik.
Let's see. Wood burning kits with a hot soldering iron to burn the surface of the wood.
anyone remember the tube of toxic material that you squeezed onto a straw and made a multicolored balloon. Loved the smell of that stuff.
My friends and I would have bottle rocket wars were you launched the bottle rocket by hand at someone and watched them run and dance.
We played chicken with lawndarts. Toss it straight up and see who would be the first and last to move.
And the really dangerous stuff we did was free. Who could jump from the highest point off of the roof. We built a teeter board, would jump off a fence, car top, etc and launch someone into the air usually involving a back flip.
Cream the queer (nuff said)
Most of this happened at my house. My twin and I were the youngest of six over a twenty year spread. My parents kept the window shades closed so they would not be afraid.
I salvaged this for my kids about a year ago. The city street dept. was taking down a playground that was no longer used and were going to take this to the dump. Had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it declared surplus although the city never paid for it. Won it by sealed bid for $29 then spent 5X that sanding, painting and replacing all hardware with stainless but man will it fly. Launched four kids so far. Thanks for reminding me Gearhead.
anyone remember the tube of toxic material that you squeezed onto a straw and made a multicolored balloon. Loved the smell of that stuff
What was that stuff called???
We also would make a tennis ball launcher with pop cans and lighter fluid...
I was doing a remodel job and the the kids at the house I was working had stepped it up a notch. They had taken a 1 1/2" PVC pipe and a 6" PCC pipe and made a tater gun out of it. They used a grill ignition lighter for the spark.... It was cool as hell!! I even got to see them shoot taters at each other... there is hope yet!
Did any of you guys build model cars and use the 'real' glue? I had a hundred of them and I spray painted all of them.
After getting bored with them we would set them on fire and push them together to make a realistic wreck scene. Blow out the fire, clean and repaint them, awesome.
Probably should not have burned them in the house on a piece of plywood(but we were ten, and it was cold out).
What about all the "toys" your father attempted to either make or put together?
My old man attempted to finish me on several occasions.
Bikes that weren't fully tightened, causing an adventurous xmas day 1st ride.
A soap box type go cart with reversed steering cables. I tried to turn left at the bottom of the hill, turned right instead into a rock fill ditch. Ouch
A swing set that got smashed by a wayward felled tree. My mother took his chainsaw away from after that.
Also played with Jarts, we would actually hold the rings and move them under the jart after a sky high straight up toss.
There was a hard core merry go round like the one rescued from the park earlier in the thread in our local park. We would each hold on to a rail and run around until it was going fast enough to pull us off our feet and drag us around. The object was to get it to spin fast enough to throw the kids who were riding it off.
Our local pool had a real high dive that was scarier to climb up than to jump from. Metal ladder almost straight up, grip tape only works so well when soaking wet.
Some of us neighborhood kids were into making our own rockets by wrapping tin foil around a pencil to form the body and stuffing it with match heads.
More often than not they would just fizzle on the "launch pad", a pipe aimed upward or, on the rare occasion, would whoosh skyward spewing smoke and fire!
That was great fun finding out what would happen when the budding rocketeer lit the one exposed match head at the bottom of the single-stage stack!
I believe the name you boys are looking for is... Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.
My goodness what a great thread. I could go on for hours. I know that the swingset at our playground was higher than any other I ever saw at any relatives or visited playgrounds. The same goes for our see-saw.
(Message edited by skinstains on January 20, 2009)