Remember this toy?
If you don't... you are obviously younger than 30 or 35...
But when I was a kid... they actually sold these things TO KIDS...
What were they? A "toy" made of either tempered GLASS or HEAVY RESIN... that when one flicked the hands up and down in a fast motion... the balls would hopefully hit each other and bounce to the opposing side and do the same...
Did I mention they were HEAVY, and HARD... and DANGEROUS???
I must have had, in my childhood... at least 5 of them at any given time.
My little brother and I would hurt ourselves so much with them, my Zia kept taking them away from us by throwing them in the garage, way up high so we couldn't reach them...
Did I mention that this particular Zia is 4'3" tall?
Yeah... by the time I was 8 or 9... I could reach them...
She was just trying to protect us.
We jammed our fingers, hit our heads accidentally with them, swung them over our heads and broke windows...
They were these heavy balls on tiny strings with a tiny plastic ring holding the strings together...
Catastrophe was BOUND to happen.
When I asked for another pair after an initial waiting period, so my parents would "forget" how stupid and dangerous those Click Clack's were, my Mama got hip to my jive and told me
the company got into trouble and no longer made them.
That didn't seem too far fetched to me... we caused a LOT of damage with those insipid things...(which incidentally, I loved... the toy... not the damage) (except that one time my brother got one right between the eyes... THAT... I liked...he cut up my jump rope... and when he hit himself in the head... Karma was on my side...)
Then... we went to Woolworth's... and there they were... and she just said... "NO!" when she saw me eyeing them.
No explanation that they weren't discontinued... just "NO!".. and back then, kids had the good sense to understand that "NO!" was the final answer, and not another word was spoken about them...
Until the other night... when I had a dream that I was a kid, playing with them... and getting hurt... all over again...
and I called my Mama up in the morning to reminisce with her about that toy...
Instinctively she said... "No!"... "You will NOT BUY THEM FOR MY GRANDSONS!"
I wasn't going to...
But I shut up... said... "Yes Mama" and hung up the phone...
Some things never change...
I loved my Click-Clacks! Yes, they were horribly dangerous, but I was really good at getting those things moving. I just found some at a Mexican market and bought them. I have lost some of my technique over the years and my kids were not all the impressed. (No on/off switch.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing back good memories!
Oh, my hell! We ALL had those! I used to LOVE them. And, we just didn't care how often we were smashed and bruised by them, we kept playing and playing with them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sparking those memories. :)
Dang you made me smile I know I had to put up a huge fight to get a set. . . .
ReplyDeleteYup, those click clacks!! Playing with it all day in the front yard with my sister and friends, we'd clickety clack em for hours!!
ReplyDeleteYep... I remember those things! And I was safe as long as I kept them AWAY from my brothers.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness......had them, loved them. I can still hear how they sounded when they clacked together.
ReplyDeleteMine were peridot green just like my birthstone. They were shiny and sparkly and knocked the crap out of me.
ReplyDelete