In the early days of Saturday Night Live, Dan Ackroyd played Irving Mainway, a sleazy toy manufacturer, who offered toys like "Bag-o-glass" and "Johnny Human Torch," a bunch of oily rags with a lighter. When confronted by an investigative reporter played by Jane Curtin (or, sometimes, Candace Bergen), Mainway would argue that common place toys could also cause injury in some implausible way.
But when millions of a thing are sold, implausible things will happen. So a pair of Wisconsin legislators want to ban the "yo-yo waterball," a ball filled with water connected to a tether. A kid could wrap that thing around his neck and, apparently, a few have.
I am sometimes glad I got to get through childhood before people tried to make it risk free. If you can't have a yo-yo waterball, why a yo-yo? Why a jump rope? Certainly tetherball should be banned (I suspect it has; please don't tell me).
But, you know, if we can save even one kid by placing them in a hermetically sealed environment, step inside, my little darlings.
H/T: Charlie Sykes.
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