The Top 10 Most Deadly Toys Of All Time

Ever since my parents bought me a pair of pogo stilts when I was 10 and the first series of exponentially more vertiginous bounces caused my leg femurs to pop out of the top of my pelvis, I have been fascinated with dangerous toys.

Dangerous toys reflect simpler times when imagination and fun took precedent over safety, when adult toymakers realized the side-splitting hilarity of maiming small, obnoxious children. So I am delighted with Radar Online's feature on the Top 10 Most Dangerous Toys of All Time, which highlights flesh-eating dolls, flesh-melting ovens and this amazing Atomic Energy Lab for Kids containing real uranium:

Kids do the darndest things, but not, apparently, nuclear physics. The toy was only sold for one year. It's unclear what effects the Uranium-bearing ores might have had on those few lucky children who received the set, but exposure to the same isotope—U-238—has been linked to Gulf War syndrome, cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma, among other serious ailments. Even more uncertain is the longterm impact of being raised by the kind of nerds who would give their kid an Atomic Energy Lab.

I'm not really sure it's that uncertain: they become teenagers who create basement nuclear fusion reactors.

Pray For Coal: The 10 most dangerous play things of all time [Radar Magazine]