Epic Win: Lawn Jarts
From Wikipedia:
Lawn darts (also called Jarts or yard darts) is a lawn game for two players or teams. A lawn dart set usually includes four large darts and two targets. The game play and objective are similar to both horseshoes and darts. The darts are similar to the ancient Roman plumbata. They are typically 12 inches (30 cm) long with a weighted metal or plastic tip on one end and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts are intended to be tossed underhand toward a horizontal ground target, where the weighted end hits first and sticks into the ground. The target is typically a plastic ring, and landing anywhere within the ring scores a point.
While the tip may not be sharp enough to be obviously dangerous, when misused, these darts can cause skull punctures and other serious injuries.
On December 19, 1988, all lawn darts were banned from sale in the United States by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Shortly after, in 1989, they were also banned in Canada. Lawn darts, used in an outdoor game, have been responsible for the deaths of three children, the latest being in early 1997 near Elkhart, Indiana.
These were fun! They were only banned because people act STUPID when they use them.
I used to love throwing these straight up in the air back when I was a little kid. One day, my sister and I were playing outside. I was at the top of our steeply sloped back yard and she was at the bottom. I threw one of these so high, I lost track of it. It buried itself into the ground RIGHT next to my sister, so deeply that we had to dig it out. I freaked out and went inside the rest of the day and I haven’t thrown one since. Who invented those things?!
Darwin
THAT’S HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!
LMAO!
Child coddling: FAIL
Parental supervision: FAIL
Darwin: WIN!
Bring them back! It can be nature’s way of thinning the herd.
lol
hahahah you’re so right.
So true!
Agreed. There are worse outdoor games than jarts that have probably killed more people (like skiing) yet they are still around.
LOL, you’re absolutely right but I have a 40 year old scar in my right knee from where MY FATHER missed the target
How did that happen? Were you not smart enough to have everybody come to the same end of the field before you started throwing?
Smart enough to have everyone at one end? Too funny. My family used to play while drinking and a bunch of kids running around. Who would have thought to move. Well maybe they thought about it for a second while I was on my way to the hospital to have stitches put in my ankle. But, I’m sure they forgot about it pretty quickly and continued the game and the drinking.
Who says he *missed*
Uh, no. I was about ten at the time, and I was well out of the field of play, or at least I thought I was. I caught one on the ankle, and it friggin’ hurt. I might have sustained a hairline fracture or bone chip from the impact because it hurt for a couple of weeks. If you’re going to play with these things, you need to get ALL non-participants completely out of the back yard. Somebody, even if taking a wide berth around the playing area as I did, could end up a casualty, and that’s not exactly conducive to an enjoyable family weekend.
Horseshoes are at least heavy, and it would have required some effort to heave one as far off course as the lawn dart did that hit my ankle.
I got hit by one of these in the nose when I was little and have had different sized nostrils ever since
I was hit in the head with one as a kid and I fine just out turned.
Except your head looks a triangle
great win.
But as a bonus, you can levitate spaceships out of swamps.
NICE ;D
I still have a peice of one embedded in my my my my my my my my *smack* head
And yet no one ever commited a drive-by darting
Lawn darts don’t kill people. *People* kill people!
wow didnt know about these ill def have to find some or make bootleg ones =]
My uncle’s family still has a set. We spent more time trying to lead fleeing seagulls invading the picnic than throwing them into the circles as intended.
I remember having a set of rounded plastic bottoms jarts, but they would slide out of the ring, not the good have to dig out of the ground landings of the originals
I still have a scar from being hit in the leg with one of those darts when I was seven or eight. It went in the lenth of the dart tip, maybe an inch and a half or two inches. Amazingly, no infection or anything, even though I just slapped a band-aid on it and went on playing, because I knew my mom would have a fit if she saw it.
there are so many stories like this that never got reported…it’s amazing these lawsuit magnets made it untill 88!
because people didn’t sue the heck out of each other until about then anyways.
that’s actually false, I took a history course and within 30 years of confederation as a country, Americans were commonly suing each other, over petty things and big things, but from what I understand it was as common or more than it is today, except we have more people so the problem appears exacerbated
Haha, I had the same thing happen. I had to have stitches and a tetanus shot though. Never played with Jarts again…
I remember when these started to appear with the plastic tips, nowhere near as fun.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15764_5-least-surprising-toy-recalls-all-time.html
Hah, great page! Terrifying lawn-dart story at the start of it.
I still have one of those things hanging around in my garage. I should take it out some time, maybe throw it at a squirrel or something.
Yeah, split ‘em in three! Darn bastards!
yeah Elkhart, Indiana!
I wonder if “near Elkhart, Indiana” means Howe? Those military kids do some ca-razee things, especially to the farm kids. And vice versa.
target was selling lawn darts a few years back. i saw some kids come out of the store and puncture people’s tires with them. mall security did nothing when i reported it.
My brother threw one of these past me and it sliced my forehead open above one eye. Good times!
Yep, another fine product recalled, not because of a defect in the product, but to protect dumbasses from themselves.
Thank god we have an industry of lawyers to protect us from this, hot coffee and cigarettes! I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have something to keep me from stuffing my pie hole with foix gras.
I’m surprised you can still buy peanut butter without a prescription and a DEA permit.
damn, I got hit by one of those right on my nose between the yes when I was like 6 years old. frikkin dangerous stuff.
Their Back!!
I saw in a catalog a redesigned lawn dart game. The darts no longer end in a metal point, but a rubber coated cone shape.
I’ll add another comment when I find that catalog again.
Yay! Nerf Lawn darts!
I remember getting hit in the chest by one of these when I was 11. I guess it must have been one of the round tipped ones, because it knocked the breath out of me for what seemed like forever, but it didn’t kill me by puncturing a lung…. lucky me!!
We have an original set in the original box.
I would totally buy that from you. While you can’t find them in the box anymore, you can buy all the parts and self-assemble.
I find it ridiculous that these were banned because 3 kids died while guns are still legal. How many kids die from gun shot wounds every year?
but real guns have never been marketed to little kids.
These were always marketed as an adult game. It said so on the box.
I loved these things! No surprise they were recalled, thanks to people being stupid, LOL! But I remember hours of fun at family picnics with them…course, we had a huge backyard and room enough to move away from the majority of folks. And I would SO buy a box of these as well, the nostalgia value alone is total win!
When I was about 5, my friend and I found a set of these in my parents’ storage room. Long story short, dart stuck in my leg. Fun times.
My dad has stories of him and his friends throwing them over the house to see how close they could get to the ring on the other side
hey, whale. ask your dad if he ever exploded a superball in the halls of his
dormitory at college…We used to bounce the Original Superball’s over the house
when I was a kid! (I never exploded one myself though heard it was possible)
Regarding Lawn darts, I came out unscathed after the half a dozen or so lawn dart
games I’ve played in my, over the age of 30, life. But, I can see how they should
have a specific perhaps fenced area to play the game, like tennis, horseshoes and swimming pools!
And they were more fun than horseshoes, because they flew so well.
We had a set of the “safe” ones when I was a kid. They were made entirely of plastic. We were playing with them at the neighbor’s house and I was sitting away from the game when the youngest neighbor over threw his ring and the lawn dart hit me on the right side of my nose, knocking me out. He ran inside because he thought he’d killed me. Three inches more to the right and it would have been my eye. I still have the scar on my nose from it.
So glad these things are gone.
I have fond memories of the family playing with these things in the back yard. We did have to pay attention to the dogs’ trying to chase them, but no one ever got hurt.
After my Dad died, I found the set in our garage; my sister didn’t want them and I don’t have a yard, so I tried selling them on Ebay. Of course they rejected the idea. You can buy samurai swords and other martial arts weapons through them, but not lawn darts.
I had a few sets of these as a kid. No injuries with them either.
Lawn darts were rad! We used to play with the steel-tipped ones all the time (although I do have to admit that even at ten years old, I did question the safety of this “toy” at time.) I had a cousin at the time that took one in the shoulder…didn’t cause any major problems, but it was pretty gross!
What a great premise for a game: “Here, you stand behind this hula-hoop and I’ll throw sharp-ass objects at it, and we’ll just both hope that I don’t lance your brain!”
I knew a few people that had been injured pretty badly by them (some of them deservedly so), but despite that, Jarts do bring back some good memories!
We had these when I was a kid, and we were STUPID with them. We’d play a form of chicken, where you’d stand still, throw the dart straight up, wait for it to come down, and whoever let it get closest before getting out of the way won. (Then again, we thought bicycle jousting with sticks and garbage can lids was a good idea, too. Amazing we survived to adulthood.) Anyway, none of us ever got hurt, but looking back on that I cringe and think it’s a miracle we didn’t.
The game as intended was about as boring as the stupid ring toss games with the wooden giraffes, so they really shouldn’t have been surprised kids found other things to do with them.
I still play with these. We go up to our cottage thats right on the lake, build targets in the lake with stones where the water is a few inches deep, throw them into the water, and wade out to get them. LOTS of fun!
Once, my dad was throwing the dart and my grandpa was relaxing in a lawn chair. My dad’s dart got some crazy spin on it and almost hit my grandpa in the head! Luckily, he moved just in time, but the dart ripped through the chair right where his head had been a few seconds ago.
Yay! I still have the set we played with in the ’70’s and we play with them every summer. The whole neighborhood is envious.
And who can forget the lyrics to the immortal “Lawn Dart” by Ed’s Redeeming Qualities? “She was pegged in the head with a Lawn Dart – her dad didn’t see her, that’s the worst part! Pegged in the head with a Lawn Dart – and they’re now off the shelves at the K-Mart.”
That’s all I could think of when I saw this post. The song will now be running through my head for the next week.
My sister took one to the face as a kid. Almost caused her one eye to go blind.
My brother got one of these in his leg when he was like five. He wasn’t even playing with them, but it was in 1999 or so. So just because they’re recalled doesn’t mean they’re gone. It TOTALLY ruined his vacation.
Bring ‘em back.. survival of the fittest baby…
I wish we still had ours…
Having been hit in the face with one of these at a 4th of July party (after they were banned, coincidentally) I really can’t speak to how they definitely shouldn’t get brought back…
And no, I did NOT throw it myself. Someone ELSE did, and I happened to be looking up. It hit me right on the edge my eyebrow… a few more millimeters and I’d be blinded in one eye.
Where can you get some new ones?
That way I can tell the sheriff they are not ‘weapons’, but ‘toys’
When my husband, Eric, was around 10 years old, he was walking out of his door and onto the front porch. What he did NOT know was that his older brother, Mike, and his friend were directly across the street, throwing Jarts at the porch Eric was on to see if they could get them to stick. Yikes! Of course you know what happened. . . .
“My husband still has a small scar under his eye where the Jart entered his face. As his mother tells it, she took him to the ER, where they tested him/X-rayed/ you-name-it 10 ways from Sunday. Finally, like eight hours later (let’s remember, this is a TEN YEAR OLD WITH A GIANT DART STICKING OUT OF HIS FACE; his mother should be canonized) a doctor simply walked in, and, when neither Eric or mom were paying attention, POP! popped that sucker right out. It missed (I believe) his optic nerve by like a millimeter or two, and there are still bone fragments floating about in his head.
My brother hit me right below the eye with one in the late 80s. I have sinus problems because of all the scar tissue beneath my cheekbone. Kids have an easy enough time hurting themselves without hurling heavy, pointed projectiles at one another.
Have you seen the scar on my cousin Mike’s foot? He still won’t let me live it down, 35 years later he’s showing it off at a family reunion. Love you Mike Miller.
LOL. Those things were awsome. I’m going to ask my father if they’re still around the garage somewhere. My parents let me play with them. I never thought about them being “dangerous.” Of course, I usually played them by myself in the backyard and never had anyone to stab.
Seriously, people. I hope all you backyard Darwinists meet a grisly death at the hands of a motorized open-reel lawnmower. It doesn’t require much effort or negligence to send one of those missiles off-course where it could hurt or maim someone. I find it a bit chilling that so many people at what is supposed to be a fun website can be so callous, willfully ignorant, and stupid. Shame on you all.
Where can I go to be willfully ignorant and stupid then?
I played with these as a kid a lot and we never had any injuries from it. And let me tell you, my uncles were IDIOTS!! I’m talking shoot each other with BBguns repeatedly to see which one gives up first.
These were not that dangerous to use if you had at least a minimum of common sense.
yoo sucks
I knew I saw the redesign in a catalog.
http://www.youngexplorers.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=Y810084
Check out this link. And NO they are not Nerf Jarts.
That would be awesome, except these Jarts are (intentionally!) described as “fantabulous.” Therefore, whomever wrote that should be led to a field and pelted with original jarts until dead or at least apologetic.
Ha Ha! My family still has some of these! (Yes, I realize they’re illegal to SELL, but we’re not selling them are we?)
I love playing with them and have never been hurt, I don’t know what all of the fuss is about. JK JK!! Sheesh! I realize they’re dangerous and we never play with little’uns. I still think they’re fun though, and sometimes things are worth the risk, ya know?
I mean seriously people, how many more people have DIED doing something like hang-gliding or bungee-jumping???
Anywhoo, they’re still alive and kickin’ at my house!
Pretty sure there’s still a box of these in my parents’ garage. Good times.
I got hit in the head with one of these when I was like 4!!! My brother who was like 6 was messing with them! lol! No serious damage was cause, well depends on what you consider serious, lol!
NORTH AMERICA FAIL
Screw a country that bans lawn darts but has guns. Maybe A. people simply be more careful and B. USA STOPS FREAKING SUCKING.
COUNTRY FAIL
Yard Darts were so damn fun. I would bu these now if i could find them. Still better than throwing iron or steel horse shoes at a pole.
my grandmother still has these.. me and my sister played with them when we were like 10 and 8… cept we were frickin smart and both stood on the same flippin side so we wouldnt hit eachother…
I’m astonished at all the people reporting injuries here. Either you were stupid kids, or you had stupid parents!
this actually an epic fail necasue my brother had a serious head injury because of one so no lawn darts are increduably serious and fatal and not a toy
I actually know a little girl that has a glass eye because of lawn darts. When I was a kid though I thought they were awesome. Nothing wrong with Lawn darts really, it should just be more a game for adults.
My cousin and I played catch with them a couple of times, but that was after we were adults (well maybe not mentally.)
Thank Youhttp://www.outdoor-games.us