19 Of The Most Dangerous Kids Toys Ever Sold

13. Magnetix Magnetic Building Sets

If there’s one thing parents know, it’s never to leave small magnets and their children alone. If a kid swallows a magnet, it’s not a big deal. They are generally non-toxic and will pass through their systems without a fuss. The problem arises when that second magnet is swallowed. The stronger the magnet, the more dangerous it gets because once one finds another, they tend to want to meet. They don’t care if the lining of your stomach or an intestinal wall is in the way, and the result is often a painful and potentially deadly bowel obstructions or perforation. That’s what Mega Branda America, Inc. learned when the Consumer Product Safety Commission demanded a recall over their Magnetix Magnetic Building Sets in 2007.

The kit includes 0.5″ steel magnetic balls that are used to join the plastic building pieces together. These building sets were probably found for older children, but ask any parent, and they will tell you toddlers love to put anything they can into their mouths. More than 3.8 million units were recalled after a 20-month-old boy died to swallow magnets that caused a bowel obstruction. Forget the magnets and go back to Lincoln Logs. Hardly anyone was ever hurt by those.

14. Thingmaker

As a kid, you might have enjoyed Creepy Crawlers, aka “EZ Bake Oven for kids who liked the gross stuff.” Pour goop into a mold, use a plastic scoop to slide it into the oven, and make rubbery bugs to throw in someone’s hair. It was as safe as anything heated under a powerful light bulb could be, but decades ago there was much more risk involved.

1964’s Thingmaker, which introduced Creepy Crawlers, was basically the same thing: you put goop in the mold, and made creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky, and altogether kooky bugs and spiders. But unlike the safe, colorful, ’90s version that spawned a Saturday morning cartoon, the Thingmaker cared naught for a child’s safety or enjoyment. There wasn’t a big, plastic scoop to easily slide the mold into the oven, but there were small metal tongs. You (very carefully) slid the mold into the metal oven, but it wasn’t powered by a light bulb. Instead, it was plugged right into the wall. That made it almost as hot, if not hotter, than an actual oven. Once the bugs were done, you removed the metal molding tray from the metal oven, using metal tongs. Yes, there was a cooling tray, but that was still piping hot metal coming at you from all sides. And kids are careless at best, so it’s no small wonder that, when they reinvented the Crawlers for ’90s kids, safe spookiness became all the rage.

15. Aqua Leisure Inflatable Baby Boats

The Aqua Leisure Inflatable Baby Boat was just what it sounded like: an inflatable boat that babies could sit in and pretend to be Captain Ahab. They were certainly adorable, but there was one other problem: they were super-dangerous. See, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the boat’s leg strap could easily snap apart, sending the baby sliding right down into the drink. In other cases, the seat itself would rip, sending the baby either into or close to the water. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem that any children actually died, though several dozen were affected and put at risk of drowning.

Worse for Aqua-Leisure Industries, the company behind these boats, is that it knew about these issues as early as 2002 and did nothing. So not only did it lose money in the 2009 recall of over 4 million boats, it was fined $650,000 by the CPSC in 2012, for failure to report. Probably the only reason the company got off that lightly is that no baby actually died. Had any, we might be speaking of that company in the past tense right now.

16. Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio-Controlled Airplane

The Sky Rangers Park airplane toy was a pretty basic radio-controlled airplane. You powered up the battery pack in the plane’s tail, launched the plane by hand, and let the radio handle the rest. That’s fine, except this particular battery had a knack for exploding before or during launch — according to the CPSC, there were 45 reports of exploding planes, resulting in injuries to the eyes, ears, hands, face, and even chest due to debris flying everywhere. There were also reports of temporary hearing loss, which makes sense considering these were serious explosions.

In 2007, Estes-Cox, the company behind the Sky Rangers plane, issued a voluntary recall (aka “we’ll get sued if we don’t”) of over 21,000 planes. Not every Park Flyer plane was recalled — if there was a warning sticker near the on/off switch, it was okay. The plane might still explode, but at least they gave you a heads-up.

17. Slip ‘n Slides

Who didn’t love their Slip ‘n Slide as a kid? Running and sliding headfirst into the water was the perfect way to cool off your childhood. The problem was if anyone other than a child used it, they risked slip-sliding straight into a concussion.

According to the CPSC, if an adult or teenager were to use various Slip ‘n Slides produced before 1993, they risked barely sliding at all, instead just hitting the ground hard and staying there, as their body’s weight would be too great to actually allow any sliding. From there, as put so gently by the CPSC, “The slider’s forward momentum drives the body into the neck and compresses the spinal cord.” This wasn’t an exaggeration: between 1973 and 1991, at least seven adults and one teenager suffered severe injuries, including fractured necks, paraplegia, and even quadriplegia. Nobody wants to risk full-blown paralysis from playing on a kid’s toy, so WHAM-O wound up recalling over nine million slides.

Slip ‘n Slides are still a thing today, but now they make it perfectly, 100 percent clear that nobody over the age of 12 should use them. Anyone older than that should find another way to cool off. Like, go in the pool.

18. Polly Pocket

Of all the toys in the world that could harm your children, you’d think Polly Pocket would be on the bottom of the list. They’re so cute and innocent, and besides, it’s just a bunch of dolls and a playhouse. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out. According to the CPSC, Polly Pocket play sets sold between May 2003 and September 2006 were at risk of having the magnets inside the toys come loose. Young children, being young children, could then eat the magnets or stick them in noses and ears, which is bad enough on its own. But if they swallow more than one, the magnets could actually attract each other inside the body, risking severe blockage, infection, or intestinal perforation. The CPSC mentioned around 170 cases of rogue magnets, which resulted in three cases of hospitalization for children ages 2, 7, and 8.

Mattel recalled millions of playsets. Polly Pocket is still a thing, so presumably, Mattel has been trying super-hard not to have their magnets run away on them again. It’s bad both for their bottom line and kids’ insides.

19. Aqua Dots

Toys are made from all kinds of chemicals. Whether you abhor plastic or you’re worried about lead in toy paint, it’s worth being careful about. But you probably don’t worry about drugs in children’s toys because no one would do that, right? In 2007, the makers of Aqua Dots (also known as Bindeez Beads), kinda did.

Bindeez Beads are used to make cool crafts with neat designs. Classic. But if you swallow them (you know, that thing that little kids do to basically anything they can fit into their mouths), you could go into a coma and possibly die. That’s because the toys contained a chemical that the body can metabolize into GHB, the drug that causes amnesia and blackouts when used in roofies. Over four million of the toys were recalled because it’s hard to make a happy toy commercial when you have to list side effects like comas and death.

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Which was the most dangerous toy on this list? Let us know in the comments!

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