Today, to get a product of your own invention onto store shelves, there are numerous organizations you have to run it through and tests that need to be done to ensure it’s safe for people to use. This wasn’t always the case, though.
An AskReddit post asked people to share some of the most messed up or dangerous products that were ever sold and have since been discontinued, and people brought their absolutely wild answers.
Convenient power.
“[…] a table cloth with uninsulated electric mesh wiring running through the entire thing which you could plug in, and no, this was not designed to be a heated blanket. It was sold alongside other electrical accessories you could just plug right into the tablecloth by stabbing the prongs through the fabric and the mesh wiring.
“This obviously resulted in electrocution and fires.”
No surprise there.
“A boating raft that flies behind the boat (think 20’ in the air). The year I bought a boat they were the newest thing with a big video in the store on a big screen tv. I wanted one, but my wife said ‘hell no!’ Our kids were about 8 and 11 at the time. The next spring I went in and they were nowhere to be found and I asked the salesperson about them. She said they were recalled due to injuries. What a shock!”
An ecological nightmare.
“The liquid bath soaps with plastic micro beads in them. A literal environmental disaster in a bottle.”
Many eagerly agreed with how awful these were, listing other awful products that contained these beads including facial cleansers and toothpaste.
False alarm.
“There was a water gun toy that was voice-activated. You would say ‘fire!’ like you’re shooting a gun and then it would shoot water. Queue a number of false fire alarms because kids are running around screaming ‘FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE’ at the top of their lungs.”
Extreme ends.
“I guess radium jewelry that glowed in the dark and gave people terminal cancer.”
In a bit of a history lesson, one user shared, “Hand painted by the way, with no protective equipment. The workers became known as radium girls, and there’s pictures of them playing with the paint, putting it on their teeth and stuff. It’s messed up.”
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“My grandfather had a kit for kids to make their own lead soldiers. It came with the molds for the soldiers, a bunch of ingots of lead, and a cooking pot to melt the lead in. Then the child could pour the molten lead into the mold, wait for it to cool, then play with their new toy. What fun!”
A little too rough.
“Anyone remember those twist-braid machines for kids? You’d stick two strands of hair, stick one in each prong, and press the button. It’d twist the individual strands, then twist them together, and you’d use those bead-clips to hold the ‘braid’ together. Friends and I lost a lot of hair in those days…”
Hindsight is 20/20.
“Fake snow made from asbestos.”
Another user shared a story along the same vein, “My brother in law used to work with a lot of asbestos before we knew how dangerous it was, him and his fellow workers used to have ‘snowball’ fights with it!”
Technicalities.
“That dyed ketchup. They had to put so much dye in it that they legally couldn’t call it tomato ketchup.”
Many people seemed to have fond memories of this ketchup, with one person saying, “Making meatloaf with the green one was a mistake. It didn’t look too good…”
Bad from the start.
“Lawn Darts. These were a lot of fun, but were also just a terrible accident waiting to happen. Plastic fins and body with a weighted pointy metal tip. I can remember older kids whipping them at the schoolyard fence to see how deep they could go into the 2”x12” pressure treated fence planks.”
Not built for that.
“[The] whole reason that tampons today have warnings about toxic shock syndrome was because of a brand of tampons back in the ’70s that were designed to be put in and left in for YOUR ENTIRE CYCLE which of course made them breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria.
“[Needless] to say they don’t make those anymore.”
Impressionable youth.
“Candy cigarettes. We had them back in the ’80s you could blow on them and the sugar dust looked like smoke. I think they were actually gum. But either way target marketing at its best.”
Some people happily pointed out that these are actually still around, though many still find them…weird.
Something feels wrong.
“I remember buying a can of Nescafé coffee that heated up in the can. It was amazing, but likely an ecological disaster. Don’t think it was around long. Or possibly it was a dream.”
Surely nothing could go wrong.
“Many shoe stores used to have fluoroscope X-Ray machines for customers to see how well their foot fit into the shoe they were trying on. They were often unshielded and were highly radioactive.”
The easy way out.
“There [used] to be a cage [that] would hang out your apartment window that you’d put your baby in so they could get fresh air without leaving the apartment.”
Faster and faster and faster.
“Honda made this 3-wheeled kick scooter in the ’70s called the Kick-n-Go. Nifty little thing with a lever on the back that you pushed with your foot to go faster. Only problem was you could get them going really fast if you just kept kicking, more so than a regular scooter where you have to kick off the ground.
“They apparently sold like hot cakes in the early ’70s, until 2 kids died on them in 1976 and they pulled them from shelves.”
There must be a better way.
“There was a product called the ‘worm getter’ in the ’80s, basically a rod that shocked the ground outside your house that for some reason caused worms to come out of the ground so you didn’t have to buy them yourself. Yeah there was about 30 deaths attributed to this thing from people shocking themselves and it was recalled.”
A light snack.
“There was a doll with an eating function that ended up eating young girls’ hair. The seller also failed [to] include how to turn off the doll in the instructions, so you can imagine the horror stories that went down because of that.”
Still hurts all the same.
“Does anyone else remember Sock ‘em Boppers? The inflatable gloves you would put on then beat your friends/siblings up with? I remember them from the late ’90s to early ’00s my brother and I used to cause so much trouble.”
Young scientists.
“I think my personal favorite was the Atomic Energy Lab, a children’s toy that came with ACTUAL U-238 and the tools to measure it. The kit also had instructions for how to prospect for Uranium ore in your own backyard!”
