Bruised Little Fingers

Clackers were the yo-yo’s delinquent cousin, loud, violent and unpredictable. The toy consisted of two over-sized, heavy marbles suspended from a loop of string. All that was required to play with them was to hold the string in the center and jerk one’s hand rapidly up and down. The balls established a rhythm of collisions six inches north and south of your hand, and produced a hallway-echoing racket that could heard all the way over in your best friend’s Language Arts class. (The vaguely testicular design of the toy was lost on us as children but gives the adult male pause, considering the hand motion involved and the banging balls).

 

This was a dare-devil toy of sorts.  Get nervous and let your grip wobble, and the balls smacked your hand. Hard. Get scared and let the string go in mid-operation, and the balls took flight across the room and hit your little sister in the eye. But it got even more adventurous, at least for an (un)lucky few! The balls were made of acrylic plastic, which was pretty tough, but not always tough enough. When the balls shattered – as they sometimes actually did – they produced a burst of sharp flying shards which, if produced on the upwards swing, kept going right into the child’s face.

Not surprisingly, Clackers were recalled later in the decade, after enough children had acquired interesting facial scars to get the government’s attention.