Questionable Products That Needed to Get Off the Shelf
Products get discontinued every day. Usually, it's because the product falls out of style or the next big thing is here.
Published 11 months ago in Wow
Products get discontinued every day. Usually, it's because the product falls out of style or the next big thing is here.
Sometimes, though, discontinued items should never have been sold in the first place. And we've rounded up all the worst offenders from throughout history!
1
As a UK schoolboy, trips to France were an excuse to buy explosives. I don’t know if they still sell them or not, but ‘bangers’ as we called them were like little sticks of explosives where you lit the fuse and retired to a safe distance. All the souvenir shops sold them. They came in different sizes and strengths. Once you got your bangers home, you blew up as much stuff as you could. Apples still on the tree were good. Toys were fun too. The more deranged up kids would explode live frogs etc. This was in the 1980s. -u/Kirkoid
3
There was a product called the "worm getter" in the 80s, basically a rod that shocked the ground outside your house that for some reason caused worms to come out of the ground so you didn't have to buy them yourself. Yeah there was about 30 deaths attributed to this thing from people shocking themselves and it was recalled -u/Maximus-53
4
The whole reason that tampons today have warnings about toxic shock syndrome was because of a brand of tampons back in the 70s that were designed to be put in and left in for YOUR ENTIRE CYCLE which of course made them breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria Needless to say, they don't make those anymore -u/AwfulDjinn
7
During the First World War, department stores, including Harrods, sold kits containing syringes, needles and tubes of cocaine and heroin. It was promoted as a present for friends on the frontline – shoot up to make life in the trenches more bearable and alleviate the horrors of war. -u/SockpuppetPseudonym2
10
My grandfather had a kit for kids to make their own lead soldiers. It came with the molds for the soldiers, a bunch of ingots of lead, and a cooking pot to melt the lead in. Then the child could pour the molten lead into the mold, wait for it to cool, then play with their new toy. What fun! -u/PaulsRedditUsername
12
A boating raft that flies behind the boat (think 20’ in the air). The year I bought a boat they were the newest thing with a big video in the store on a big screen tv. I wanted one, but my wife said “heck no!” Our kids were about 8 and 11 at the time. The next spring I went in and they were nowhere to be found and I asked the salesperson about them. She said they were recalled due to injuries. What a shock! (They still looked fun) -u/TrenttheUncatchable1
13
Anyone remember those twist-braid machines for kids? You'd stick two strands of hair, stick one in each prong, and press the button. It'd twist the individual strands, then twist them together, and you'd use those bead-clips to hold the "braid" together. Friends and I lost a lot of hair in those days… -u/TechnoMouse37
20
Lawn Darts. These were a lot of fun, but were also just a terrible accident waiting to happen. Plastic fins and body with a weighted pointy metal tip. I can remember older kids whipping them at the schoolyard fence to see how deep they could go into the 2”x12” pressure-treated fence planks. -u/YYZRE
Most Popular
