18. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...DANGEROUS TOYS

The absolute very first time I handled a dangerous toy was no doubt a few days after I was born because, in the old days, every toy in the UK was a potential death trap and deliberately geared to kill us or, failing that, maim us at the very least. If we were merely badly injured, the toy manufacturers and their political masters would consider that an opportunity missed.

Surely, besides their lethal nature (a fairly significant downside I grant you) there have been no finer couple of decades for toys than the 70s and 80s? They had a captive market in young people because there was genuinely bugger all else to do but play with stuff.

I have already explained in an earlier post (here) how it was educational policy to toughen up the character of the nation’s youth by deliberately making life hard for us. Parental beatings, teacher canings and school bullying were all actively encouraged by successive governments with subliminal messages which were broadcast in the middle of the news or during the test card.

All advertising and products aimed specifically at children needed to be exclusively unhealthy or, preferably, downright dangerous. Sweets were produced, under a government-sponsored think tank called ‘Barratts’, which looked like cigarettes and were heavily promoted to encourage us to take up the habit once we’d moved up to secondary school. Space Dust had an ingredients list like a chemistry set with a full bag of sugar liberally sprinkled on top. All toy soldiers were made with poisonous paint and adverts encouraged kids to lick them when their parents weren’t looking.

Jumble sales and church fetes were only granted licences to operate if they contained at least one stall with a wire loop game which administered an electric shock to any unsuspecting kid whose shaky hand meant they brushed the wire with their prong (sounds like a life lesson for lots of young boys). It was later adapted to make a simple buzzing sound on contact but this was a temporary measure until the clergy and parents had left the stall at which point they’d reconnect the electricity supply to make it a fully-functioning torture device again.

Officials also recruited secondary school kids to set off slinkys down the stairs and see how many of their class-mates they could trip up along the way. These kids were paid on a commission-basis with the biggest payouts reserved for the most serious injuries. My friend Polly commandeered the tallest flights of stairs and made an absolute fortune. She's a Health & Safety Officer now.

We weren't safe in the shops either. The government appointed Clarks (yep, the evil shoe empire) to create an automated foot measuring device which included a safety switch that could be turned off by the local council allowing the clamp to crush the feet of unsuspecting youngsters in front of their parents. If the Chinese market had been as developed for business then as it is now, Clarks would've been a great British export success story.

School authorities, in fear of a poor OFSTED inspection or whatever the equivalent was in the 70s/80s (almost certainly nothing), would bow to government pressure and organise British Bulldog games at break-times with the explicit aim of injuring as many kids as possible in the shortest possible time. Our primary school record was 11 kids in 15 minutes, 3 of them hospitalised. I think that put us mid-table for Lincs and South Kesteven but well behind the progressive schools down south.

Another cunning plan from the administrators was to paint on the playground an absurdly large hopscotch grid which required leaps of such prodigious lengths, well beyond the capabilities of 8-11 year olds, that the school was bound to chalk up a couple more casualties in afternoon break to add to the total.

We were such an obedient generation. Advertisers could make us do anything in those days and we were absolute suckers for it because we were so media illiterate. We didn’t understand their cynical marketing tricks and we dutifully did what anyone on telly suggested, especially if they were celebs whom we assumed had only agreed to take on these advertising roles because they genuinely believed in the product and not simply because they were bunged a few quid. When they said we should tell our mummy about the honey but not about the high levels of sugar in our 'healthy' cereal, we did as we were told and sales of Sugar Puffs went through the roof. Our folks would've done the same with Campari if they hadn't been put off by anything which might have wafted here from Luton Airport.

Faced with a drink which was so full of additives that it glowed in the dark and required polar bears to wear sunglasses in the adverts, we ignored the fact it tasted awful and was probably taking years off our lives. After all, it was ‘frothy man’ and this outweighed any other downsides in our innocent minds. And don't get me started on weebles which wobbled but didn't fall down. SO WHAT? WE DIDN'T CARE!! That said, I bet if I'd have presented one to my son for his birthday when he was younger (and this was as destructive a 4 year old as you could possibly meet), there's no way that thing would have managed to get back up again.

As in every sci-fi big brother movie set in a dystopian future, there was always the usual small group of safe toys which slipped through the policy net. Fuzzy Felt, airfix models, hula hoops, scalextric, sea monkeys, shaker makers, space hoppers, sketchagraph, swing ball. All of them offering a glimmer of hope for brighter times ahead and many of them beginning with 's' (come on, conspiracy theorists, surely a sign). Like todays iPhones, we would spend hours on these toys but, unlike iPhones, we couldn’t use them to watch porn, send nude pics or abuse people we’d never met before. Clearly, and I may only be speaking for myself here, if we could've, we would've.

Nowadays, toys and games are screened so rigorously to protect our children's physical and mental well-being that anything which threatens to entice kids off their backsides has been banned. Skipping ropes, yo yos and conkers are all viewed as too dangerous while egg & spoon and sack races are overly-competitive and so damaging to the self-esteem of any kid who fails to win (referring to a child 'losing' is now officially considered a hate crime). To balance this reduction in activity and tackle the inevitable obesity issues it causes, we're trying to stop them eating any snacks which taste good. What's more, to address their mental health, we've replaced these snacks adverts with promotional material for Play Station and X-Box games where they can shoot, run over or stab anything which takes their fancy from the comfort of their own bedroom. Suddenly, cigarette sweets, sugary space dust and lead-painted toy soldiers don't seem quite so dangerous after all.

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Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...THE TUBE