Top 10 Worst Toy Recalls
Ah, nothing like a nice recall of millions of toys to completely wreck your corporate reputation. Parents tend to not appreciate when you endanger the lives of their special little snowflakes, you know! And then they tell 20 of their friends how bad your company sucks.
Below are the 10 worst toy recalls of recent years. One wasn’t recalled but it’s not something we’d recommend for your special little snowflake.
10. Yo Yo Ball
Why: Children had an unfortunate tendency to strangle themselves with the stretchy cord.
The Yo Yo Ball looks like such fun! And it was very popular in the early 2000s (I actually remember this one). Unfortunately, there were more than 400 reports of near-strangulation of little kids with the happy Yo Yo Ball. Apparently they would somehow wrap the stretchy cord around their throats. Consumer Reports stated it knew of at least 17 cases of kids blacking out because of Yo Yo Ball.
One girl almost choked herself to death with Yo Yo Ball while performing ‘The Helicoptor’ – swinging it over her head (then around her throat). After that incident, the Canadian and UK governments said ‘screw this’ and banned the thing.
FYI – If you want to live dangerously, you can still find a few on eBay!
9. Mattel Toys
Why: Millions of Mattel toys were recalled because of dangerous lead paint and child-choking magnets.
There were about nine million toys from Mattel that were recalled in 2007 because of excessive lead. These toys were made in China. Turns out that the Chinese like to use very deadly and illegal lead paint on some of the toys they make. There also was a recall for some toys because of magnets used in the products. Apparently they were easy for little ones to swallow and choke to death. The Mattel recall came just after a Fisher-Price infant toy recall involving lead paint, too. One child died from lead poisoning and about 20 needed surgery to get magnets out of their gullets. All in all, a real cluster$#$% on the public relations front for Chinese toy manufacturers.
8. Aqua Dots
Why: The toy coating had a chemical that after it metabolized, turns into a date rape drug. Yes. Seriously.
The Chinese sure can get themselves in some hot water. In 2007, US safety officials had to recall over 4 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots because there was a chemical in them that made kids puke and even fall into comas when swallowing them.
The Aqua Dots had a chemical that when metabolized, would turn into the drug GHB, a drug very popular with date rapists. It’s also known as gamma-hydroxy butyrate. GHB in low doses causes feeling of euphoria and in high doses, comas and seizures. Three kids in Australia were hospitalized from ingesting Aqua Dots.
7. Clackers
Why: Look, you’re swinging two heavy plastic balls on the end of two strings. Why do you think?!
Oh, the 70s. What a great time to be a kid. You could play with all sorts of fun, very dangerous toys and no one said a word. Well, okay….I have to say, Clackers was a very bad idea.
Actually, this product was NOT recalled. Hard to believe. These heavy balls smacked into kids’ faces, broke teeth, bruised noses and cheek bones. Also, sometimes the string would break and Clacker would become a projectile. Also, sometimes the balls shattered. There were safety warnings galore, but no recall.
These days, you can still buy them! However, they are made from slightly safer shatterproof materials and nylon cords. Nostalgia aside, I’ll pass.
6. Easy-Bake Oven
Why: Sometimes Easy-Bake Oven would easily bake little ones’ hands.
Easy-Bake, a division of Hasbro, recalled about 1,000,000 Easy-Bake ovens in 2007 because children could stick their hands inside the opening of the oven. This would cause their hands or fingers to get stuck. There were 30 reports of burns, and one little girl lost a finger.
5. Skippy Pool Toys
Why: Any toy these days that is supposed to be used like a sling shot is a bad idea.
Kids were supposed to launch the plastic fish across the water by pulling the tongue of the fish. It would sometimes break. This would cause injuries to the hands and sometimes even torn fingers and thumbnails.
4. Hang 10 Mini Hammock
Why: This little kids’ hammock would suddenly collapse and string your kid up like a marionette.
Sleeping in a hammock isn’t supposed to be a deadly pastime, but it was for 12 children between 1984 and 1995. The problem was that these little hammocks did not come with spreader bars to keep the hammock bed open. This meant that the child could get it twisted around his or her neck when getting in or out. Some children were nearly strangled to death and at least one suffered brain damage.
A total of 75,000 of these little death traps were recalled. Also, 10 other manufacturers recalled similar products, with a total recall number of over 3 million.
3. Pokeballs from Burger King
Why: Took us a sec to understand this one: Little ones could somehow stick half the ball on their face and suffocate. Leave it to a kid to figure out how to do that.
During the Pokeman craze in the 1990s, Burger King started to put Pokeman action figures in their kiddie meals. Great idea! What wasn’t so great was to stick the figure in a little Pokeball container. We still don’t really get it, but several small children almost died when they somehow stuck half the ball to their face, covering the nose and mouth. We think the 3” in diameter size was the problem here.
It’s hard to really blame Burger King on this one. But we do blame them for offering a free small French fry in exchange for the Pokeball to draw them back in the restaurant.
25 million of these little fun death balls were recalled. That’s a lot of French fries.
2. Sky Dancers Flying Dolls
Why: The fun flying dolls liked to fly into teeth, eyes, torsos, groins and so forth.
The Sky Dancer Flying Doll just sounds like a bad idea from the get go. The idea was to insert your doll into a launcher feet first, pull a cord and launch the flying doll into the sky. Sadly, the flying doll flew into children’s eyes and teeth. Galoob Toys received 150 injury reports including temporary blindness, concussion, broken ribs, broken teeth and face lacerations.
Worse, the company decided to not report these items to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Bad idea to mess with those people. They were fined $400,000 and their company was largely ruined.
1. Jarts
Why: You have to be kidding.
Jarts are the Granddaddy of Toy Recalls. These little monsters caused 7,000 injuries and 4 deaths in the 70s and 80s. Original Jarts were heavily weighted so they would stick in the ground. This feature would also cause them to stick in faces, eyes and guts. The idea of the game was to throw them underhanded at targets on the ground. It sounds like some kids – surprise – were doing other things with them.
All lawn dart games were banned in the US in 1988 by the CPSC.
List by Joseph Pickett
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Come on now, Clackers?
So why don’t we ban baseball and little league? Kids get teeth nocked out and other injuries while wearing protective pads.
Why are we so quick to ban something that results in a few injuries but ignore something that injures a lot more kids?
This world is screwed up.
Don’t get me started on hockey.
Well, one could argue about the fun/usefullness/tradition of a toy or sport against its dangers. I think such a comparison would show up that clackers are needlessly dangerous because they aren’t even a good toy.
I would rather have my kid running around with a baseball bat than one of these things, I guess.
You could always tell which kids played with clackers (also known as click-clacks) because they would have multiple bruises on their arms from the clacker balls slamming into them.
Funny..I played jarts just a couple of years ago, nothing happened then again I was 20 :/
I am in favor of dangerous toys. Or, rather, I am not in favor of any governmental ban that presumes that some useless government functionary is wiser than I am with regard to the care and feeding of my own children. Every last one of those injuries or deaths is a failure of parenting. And four ..in sixteen years or so? Hardly worth bothering. More are killed on bicycles. Tell the government to go to hell and buy whatever the hell you want for your kids — but you had better make damn sure they’re supervised or that you understand the risk. Why would you *not* build spreader bars for a hammock if you’re going to put a 2-year old in it? Why the hell would you put a 2-year old in such a thing???
How, pray tell, are parents supposed to know when a toy has a toxic coating on the outside of it?
You might not like the fact that the government recalls and/or bans certain things, but the fact is that they have to have some sort quality control for the products that are meant for children. If they know a certain type of crib is responsible for the deaths or maiming of babies and toddlers, are they supposed to sit by and do nothing? No, they need to intervene. If the government or a company knows that a certain toy is causing deaths or near-deaths for a simple, easily avoidable reason, such as suffocation from a pokeball, should they say “Oh well – the parents should have been smarter”? They could do that, but luckily they don’t; at least someone is looking out for the children in that respect.
Go ahead and decide what toys you want your child to play with, because that’s your right as a parent, but don’t get sanctimonious and offended when the goverment tries to recall or ban products that kill or injure children, even if most of those deaths or injuries wouldn’t happen if the parents were using common sense. It behooves the government to regulate products meant for their future generations, and it should be appreciated when they do, because we all know that they drop the ball far too often.
If I had a set of Jarts right now. I would be putting them up for auction. I haven’t seen those things since before my teen years
One of my cousins had a Sky Dancer toy. She launched the thing straight at my face. She’s lucky there was a 15 year difference (me being older) between us because she would have otherwise received the older cousin beat down she deserved.
Also, for your enjoyment, check out this youtube video regarding lawn darts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q5BryXp6RY&feature=related
We still have our Jarts from the late 70′s and, we do occasionally use them, is this a bad thing?
To Gavin : How much money do you want for them !!!! I would sell my soul to own a set as that was my favorite game as a kid. I would suggest putting them on eBay or Amazon. I don’t know how old you are (I am 49) and back in the late 60′s and early 70′s, I would always anticipate going to my Uncle’s house and play it as he had a complete set of them
AAAH! I HAD THE POKEBALL I SERIOUSLY DID OH MY GOD. I wonder what happened to it… I also had 3 sky dancers. Had no problems with either.
Oh my. I played with a lot of this stuff so funny.
OMT(o my toast) I begged my mom for those aqua dots just a few years ago O_o I’ve never been happier to have heard my parents say no, I freaking love those overprotective crazies
I just can’t believe that there is such a toy that would use real fire especially when they are intended for kids. That’s really unthinkable. We all know “playing with fire” is dangerous.
Which of these toys used fire? The Easy Bake Oven used a 100W lightbulb. If you used a higher wattage bulb you raised the baking temperature. Guess what happened if you used a lower wattage bulb!?
I’ll admit, when I visited my Grandma with my cousins, I did not play safely with the jarts. Our game was to toss them up as high as we could, take cover under the awning, and watch the weight suddenly tip downward and plunge the jart to the earth. The record holder for that day, my oldest cousin, got one buried in the ground so far that it covered the first third of the plastic fins! It was awesome, but…definately not safe!
What ever happened to the days when a kid could get a rifle for Christmas?
Kids still get rifles, but they usually have parents who are serious hunters or sportsmen otherwise.
I’m not trying to be rude here, but I had to point it out: “Pokeman”? Really? I don’t know how you can still misspell Pokemon when you obviously had to look up a promotional toy related to it. But yeah, I remember the Poke Ball recall. The toy is clearly marked “ages 3 and up”, but some parents let a 2-year-old play with it. I don’t see how you can recall something if the injury was caused by not adhering to the warnings.
I had that spin n’ glow doll….. I remember it hitting me in the face.
I also had aqua dots, so it creeps me out knowing drugs could’ve been in them.
I just saw a commercial for this flying Tinkerbell toy that is exactly the same as those SkyDancers.
Weird.