It wasn't exactly a toy, and I hadn't even thought of it til I was looking for something else online and noticed it- does anyone remember Fuzzy Wuzzy Bear Soap from the mid-1960s? When you'd put water on it and start to wash your hands, 'fur' would 'grow' on it.
I can't remember which of these (or perhaps it was another) that I had as a child but I do remember getting a chemistry set for Christmas one year. It came with a pestle and mortar, several bottles of interesting chemicals, and instructions for mixtures that could be made with some fun effects. Then, of course, I tried my own mixes. I am guessing that kids don't get chemistry sets for Christmas anymore, or at least not ones that include things that would smoke, burn, or create noxious fumes.
@Ken Anderson Your post adds to a very old series of posts, the last dated Feb 2016. How in the world did you (do you) go back that far to see reasons to add opinion? If "something's in the wind here", will you be good enough to let us know? IOW, is there any reason to be concerned? I believe you know precisely where I'm at. Frank
Simply click into the category, and then click down to the earlier threads. It lets you jump ahead a few pages.
@Ken Anderson Yep! I had one! Of course, anything that went "boom" was of interest. Did you ever hear the term "horse caps"? Those were giant dots of cap explosive, maybe 3 times the size of the common caps we had. I fired them on the sidewalk with a hammer. Not sure of the real name for them. Small wonder I'm deaf today! Frank
No, I am not familiar with them but firecrackers and cherry bombs were readily available, albeit a little older than the cap pistol age.
I had a bow and arrow set and hunted rats with it then on a Sat movie I saw a crossbow and thought I can make one well a small one it did not turn out as intended, huge rubber band powered shot headless nails. When dad saw it he just laughed until he saw me shooting at things across the lake and got interested real fast, 50 yds or less would embed in wood, also easy to shoot 100 yds, he looked at and broke it into pieces and said no more. Later years I built another larger shooting 3/8 dia bolts with ground heads to an arrow point, neighbor had an old wrecked pickup we shot one threw the outside of the door! Windshield was nothing. The next day I took it apart and it was history, too dangerous to keep. Made a marble cannon from a pipe about 2' long mounted in a 4x4 post with skate wheels on the bottom, powered by home made propellent. We also made projectiles from flour wetted and dried, we had no idea of how those were until one penetrated the neighbors garage! Another: we had army men so we needed a cannon a Daisy BB gun, take the magazine out and a 12 ga empty shell backwards was a perfect fit and the air shot it maybe 10' so we had our cannon for them. It would knock them down. Some things we made worked way to well! I loved my chemistry set. Unreal all the things we did. Embarassed as to mention many more we sure did them though!
@Tex Dennis "Made a marble cannon from a pipe about 2' long mounted in a 4x4 post with skate wheels on the bottom, powered by home made propellent. We also made projectiles from flour wetted and dried, we had no idea of how those were until one penetrated the neighbors garage!" We have a member now, new, unaware of my history of 8th. grade blasting powder experience, 2nd. degree burns to my face and hand, attempting to make up "Berge's Blasting Powder", by mixing Potassium Chlorate, sugar, wax shavings, and Sulfur, which WHOOSHED! very quickly.........and you have not been here long enough to be aware of my story. But you have tempted my curiosity, wonderring what your home made propellant was made of. I used a 1" galvanized pipe about 8" long, elbow on one end, plugged, dropped a glass marble into the pipe right after a Black Kat firecracker......never found out how far those marbles shot. The burn accident turned me away from my chemistry set for awhile, the weird and extreme still beckoning, so in beginning high school, I built high-voltage Tesla Coils, rotary high-voltage interruptors, stuff that put fear in most adult observers' minds. I had bought a Sears lathe, with which I wound transformer coils, high-voltage of course, the biggest was 90,000 volts to power an old Coolidge X-Ray tube I had gotten hold of. Do you remember ever seeing one of the shoe-store X-Ray fitting machines? Got one for free at 15. Can you imagine all the radiation absorbed by kids, parents, and sales people gazing into these machines for sometimes half a minute or longer? Average chest X-Ray exposure time is far less than 1 second. Government outlawed the shoe machines in the 1950s. I have no idea how widespread their use was in America. I lived outside Chicago. Frank