<story><title>Fun, danger, and 70s airplane toys</title><url>https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-worlds-most-dangerous-toy-edition</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>greenbit</author><text>Those sure were different times. I recall in the mid 1970s, as a kid no less, being able to go into a pharmacy and buy sulfur or KNO3 w&amp;#x2F;o any trouble at all. However it wasn&amp;#x27;t more than a couple years later, when a request for phosphorus was met with an icy &amp;quot;do I need to call your mother&amp;quot; stare, that my budding career as a chemist came to an end. Besides, the Radio Shack across the street had this &lt;i&gt;computer&lt;/i&gt; set up for customers to play with..</text></item><item><author>tragomaskhalos</author><text>The 70s really were another country - see also: chemistry sets. These are pale and anodyne things now with a mere handful of bland household-level chemicals - assuming you can even find one in a toy shop at all. But as a lad these were both readily available and full of dozens of intriguing substances that would send a modern health and safety wonk into apoplexy. Who among us did not incinerate all of the supplied magnesium in a short series of pyrotechnic orgies? Merit was the go-to brand in the UK, but I also had a set from an American company that contained, among other exotica, potassium ferrocyanide. This is decidedly non-lethal but the very name never failed to send a poisoner&amp;#x27;s frisson through my teenage brain.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>__MatrixMan__</author><text>My friends and I found documents authored in the 70&amp;#x27;s and went around the 90&amp;#x27;s trying to buy saltpeter--whatever that is.  Luckily time had changed &amp;quot;Do I need to call your mother?&amp;quot; into &amp;quot;What the hell is that?&amp;quot; and our mothers were never called.&lt;p&gt;We eventually gave up and graduated to shoplifting model rocket engines, which we powdered with vice grips.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fun, danger, and 70s airplane toys</title><url>https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-worlds-most-dangerous-toy-edition</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>greenbit</author><text>Those sure were different times. I recall in the mid 1970s, as a kid no less, being able to go into a pharmacy and buy sulfur or KNO3 w&amp;#x2F;o any trouble at all. However it wasn&amp;#x27;t more than a couple years later, when a request for phosphorus was met with an icy &amp;quot;do I need to call your mother&amp;quot; stare, that my budding career as a chemist came to an end. Besides, the Radio Shack across the street had this &lt;i&gt;computer&lt;/i&gt; set up for customers to play with..</text></item><item><author>tragomaskhalos</author><text>The 70s really were another country - see also: chemistry sets. These are pale and anodyne things now with a mere handful of bland household-level chemicals - assuming you can even find one in a toy shop at all. But as a lad these were both readily available and full of dozens of intriguing substances that would send a modern health and safety wonk into apoplexy. Who among us did not incinerate all of the supplied magnesium in a short series of pyrotechnic orgies? Merit was the go-to brand in the UK, but I also had a set from an American company that contained, among other exotica, potassium ferrocyanide. This is decidedly non-lethal but the very name never failed to send a poisoner&amp;#x27;s frisson through my teenage brain.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>denton-scratch</author><text>Sulphur? My local hardware store sells flours of sulphur for gardeners. It&amp;#x27;s used for acidulating soil, and for combatting some kinds of fungus. I don&amp;#x27;t know why anyone would want to regulate the sale of elemental sulphur; it&amp;#x27;s not toxic, caustic or explosive. It&amp;#x27;s less flammable than a piece of wood.</text></comment>