Another Top 10 Dangerous Kids' Toys

Script written by Michael Wynands.

Another Top 10 Dangerous Kids' Toys

Kids just wanna have fun, but with some toys, that’s easier said than done. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for Another Top 10 Dangerous Kids Toys.

For this list, we’re bringing you even more toys that present a serious health and safety risk to the kids they’re marketed to. Once again, we’re excluding toys that are only dangerous when the age guidelines are ignored. If you didn’t see a toy you thought should be on this list, be sure to check out our first video of the Top 10 Dangerous Kids Toys.

#10: Polly Pocket

These dolls made a big impression when they debuted in 1989, despite their modest height of under one inch. Imagine an entire apartment, shrunk down to fit into a pocket-sized folding dollhouse, styled as a makeup compact. Add the male equivalent playsets, Mighty Max, and this line of choking hazards had kids in the '90s eating out of the palm of their hand. These toys were already dangerous enough to warrant teaching your kid the Heimlich maneuver, but the Polly Pocket magnetic playsets, with their magnetic clothing, warranted a full recall in 2006. These dolls were too large to swallow, but the small magnets often fell out, wreaking life-threatening havoc on digestive systems if multiple were ingested.

#9: Inflatable Baby Floats

There’s nothing scarier than a potentially lethal baby product. Parents always need to be extra careful with infants around water, but you can understand how one might let their guard down when placing a child in an inflatable device specifically designed for that purpose. Sadly, a number of baby flotation products have ripped, resulting in the child sinking or being smothered. In 2009, some 4 million units, consisting of various models of the Aqua-Leisure Baby Floats, were recalled after 31 incidences of the seat strap ripping occurred, allowing the baby to fall into the water. In 2015, Otteroo floats were recalled after some 50 cases of deflation were reported. Thankfully, neither specific case resulted in death.

#8: Children’s Wood Burning Kits

If the word “burning” is in the name of your product, maybe don’t market it to kids. Admittedly, the various companies manufacturing this product have always targeted the outdoors-y, do-it-yourself, “boy scouts and girl scouts of America” kind of kid. They’re the types who generally don’t need their toys bubble-wrapped. Sets from the 1950s were notorious for burns and for trusting in the fact that kids would learn responsibility. Modern kits, like those made by educational toy companies like T.S. Shure and NSI, are more safety-minded. But no amount of safety recommendations can mitigate the potential for burns, or worse, fires. If it can burn a pattern into wood, it can burn plenty of other stuff too.

#7: Creepy Crawlers

It might not exactly be playing with fire, but this creation station still involves high temperatures, and in early models, toxic fumes. Mattel first began producing Creepy Crawlers in 1964. Sets included die-cast creature molds, a liquid chemical that kids poured into the mold, and a small oven or hot plate to heat the “plastigoop” into hardened rubbery shapes. Creepy crawlers got a lot safer in the 1990s, but the early versions consisted of an open-face hot plate that rose to 390 degrees Fahrenheit. It might not be liquid magma, but that’s still blisteringly hot, especially if you touched the creature before it solidified. Although marketed as “non-toxic” at the time, that was before we knew the dangers of PVC fumes.

#6: Austin Magic Pistol

Doesn’t it suck that all the most dangerous toys are also the coolest? This toy gun actually uses combustion – flames shoot out of it! It’s made of metal and totally looks like a ray gun from early sci-fi! While the Austin Magic Pistol might make for a wicked awesome vintage toy when you’re in your twenties or older, this circa 1950s “toy gun” is absurdly dangerous. Its “magic crystals” are composed of a mixture of calcium carbide and water, which, with a little help from the sparking trigger, combusts violently. Even in the wild and crazy '50s, it quickly became apparent that this was no toy– resulting in a number of bans.

#5: Science Wiz Bottle Rocket Party

Listed in the “Top 10 Unsafe Toys of 2014” list from parental safety group W.A.T.C.H., this kit gives children everything they need to have a bottle rocket party! It includes the rockets themselves, stoppers, and fun “caution” tape so you feel like you’re at a real rocket launch. What the kit doesn’t include are the safety goggles they recommend on the packaging. The baking soda and vinegar-propelled rockets aren’t going to explode, but the projectiles still present a significant risk of eye or facial injury. The kit is labeled “8 and up”, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any 8-year-old that’s going to wait until they can track down safety goggles before playing with something this cool.

#4: Easy-Bake Oven

The Little Lady Empire Stove, with its metal frame and up to 600 degrees of heat, might’ve been the more deadly children’s stove, but the Easy-Bake Oven has had a much more significant impact since Kenner launched the product in 1963. Over 25 million units have been sold since, meaning that the average kid likely interacted with one at some point. Most of the 11 models have been totally safe, but one or two got the recipe wrong. The 2006 version was recalled after 29 reports surfaced of kids getting their fingers caught in the front-loading oven door. Despite the recall, another 249 incidents were reported, one of which ended with a little girl needing a partial finger amputation.

#3: Stats 38 Quick Folding Trampoline

Anything that goes up must come down, and the higher you launch a child into the air, the greater the risk for injury. This specific trampoline might be mini, but it packs a huge risk factor. Marketed to children 6 and up, it has some serious bounce to it. No safety, no padded handlebar. The likelihood of your child losing control and flying into furniture is high. On the packaging you find the following warning: "Landing on the head or neck can cause serious injury, paralysis, or death...”. If as a manufacturer, you feel the need to put that on a product you’re selling to 6 year olds, you might’ve missed the point of age restrictions.

#2: Mini Hammock

Inflatable baby boats might be prone to malfunction, but mini hammocks seem as if they were designed specifically to endanger young children. Made from a fine nylon mesh, and lacking any sort of spreader bar, these child-sized hammocks were prone to entangling their young users. Most often, this would occur when the child was attempting to get in or out of the hammock. In 1996, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall and safety warning on ten different mini hammock brands and models, most notably the EZ Sales hammock brand, deemed unsafe for use due to a lack of spreader bar. Between 1984 and 1995, there were twelve separate cases of kids becoming trapped in the hammock and dying from asphyxiation.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

- Monster Science Colossal Water Balls
- Yo-Yo Balls
- Sky Dancers

#1: Aqua Dots

Aqua Dots are small colorful balls that you arrange into patterns or images. Spray the design with water and they solidify together into a single piece of art to show off to mom or dad. But as we’ve learned, anything a kid can swallow– they will swallow. These small toy beads, when ingested, caused vomiting, respiratory failure, seizures and comas. Why? Aqua Dots contained a compound that when consumed, breaks down into GHB– the notorious date rape drug. The product was pulled from shelves after 3 separate toddlers fell into comas. The parents of one toddler, who suffered permanent brain damage, won their court case against the manufacturers, distributors and toy designers, each company being assigned partial blame for the tragedy.

Do you agree with our list? What dangerous toys do you remember from your childhood? For more notorious top 10s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.