But there was also an unremarkable yet amazing little object tucked innocently into the folded and latched metal panels of the set I acquired. That object is still with me, and occasionally I take it out of storage to look at on the darkest of nights. But I’ll get back to that.
Some toys were dangerous when I was young, and that’s part of what made them fun. I won’t mention the company that made these toys (it was Mattel.) They didn’t intend for their products to be harmful, but apparently safety wasn’t top of mind in the 1960s. And that’s intriguing, since Underwriters Laboratories’ headquarters was just a few miles from my house in Illinois. Founded in 1894, they had plenty of time to ramp up testing of toys by the time the following childhood marvels hit the market, but I’m glad they didn’t.
When I had kids of my own I was thrilled to see that these toys still existed, sort of. By the 1990s, safety conscious manufacturers substituted light bulbs for hot plates, encasing the previously open and accessible scalding surfaces deep within the machine. They took forever due to lower heat and were just not that fun. My kids never enjoyed them much.
The final member of the Mattel triad was the PowerShop. This was a truly useful little tool that morphed into one of four configurations: jig saw, lathe, disc sander and drill press. It came with an assortment of balsa-wood pieces and project ideas but could handle much more. I made the little cannon pictured here.
But back to the toy that didn’t go wherever toys end up when you age. This one is so intriguing I kept it.
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