Originally published at: The Water Wiggle has a delightful feature where it can suddenly wrap its hose around your neck | Boing Boing
…
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Go with the flow.
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would rather a the Bag-O-Glass
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https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/1978/recall-of-wham-o-water-wiggle-toy
Unsafe and deadly toy was recalled.
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Consumers who own a “Water Wiggle” toy should return the product to the retail store where purchased for a full refund or credit toward another product.
I’ll just go to my local Woolco…
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I’m just imagining some nightmare scenario where some kid gets doused in Silly String and catches fire, but they try to put him out with the Water Wiggle and he drowns, but also gets a Jart through his skull because why not? 
Later, they roll him up in the Slip N’ Slide to hide the evidence.
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Wham-O stated that the recall is occasioned by the death of a four-year-old child in March 1978. The youngster was playing with some other children in his backyard with a dismantled “Water Wiggle,” one from which the bell-shaped head had been removed or had come off. The exposed aluminum nozzle became lodged in his mouth and he drowned. Wham-O stated that it had no knowledge of how or why the toy was dismantled or how the nozzle became lodged in the child’s mouth.
I remember it being fairly easy to remove the head from the nozzle. I also remember it being hella dangerous to operate without the head, because the metal nozzle would fly all over the place. If it hit you, it would leave a bruise.
My immediate thought was to make it as an injection-molded single-piece nozzle and shield.
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We had one of those! Great fun, but did seem to have an uncanny ability to impact one’s …nethers.
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A toy from the days before we had to wonder about the water supply…
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The playgrounds in my childhood had:
Monkeybars- a lattice of steel bars embedded in a concrete slab. At least the bars were welded instead of bolted together
Swing Sets- a thick wooden slab for a seat suspended by thick metal chains
Teeter Totters- don’t know which were worse, the wood ones [splinters] or the metal ones [burns or frostbite, depending on the season]
Slides- made of steel, with a hand rail only at the top.
In addition, there were other execution methods… merry go rounds, a steel pole with a ball at the end of a metal chain, etc.
Of course, bb guns were widespread, and there’s nothing so invigorating as a game of Chicken on a bicycle.
Kinda surprised that childhood deaths & maimings weren’t higher.
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After watching the video, I’m a little surprised that none of the recorded fatalities involved the Water Wiggle wrapping itself around someone’s neck and choking the life out of them.
But maybe the recorded cases were just outliers, and the Water Wiggle usually did a better job of disposing of the witnesses as well.
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Don’t forget shooting bottle rockets at each other, or those Jim Miller concrete playground sculptures we had in the 60s and 70s.
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Will you be using your Wham-O Time Machine®
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Interesting demonstration of non-lethal strangulation/choking and the all-White characters depicted.
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We wanted one but we just ran through the sprinkler and we were happy or else.
Jarts on the other hand, we were allowed to have.
Go figure.
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We were tough, and didn’t whine about the occasional maiming.
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I bet that fucker hurt.
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Elvira Kurt has entered the chat:
Aw, just rub some dirt on it! 
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I’d been thinking that American society had reached peak stupid in 2022 but now I feel better
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