Submitted by Erica B

Silly String is a ridiculous concept — an aerosol can . It’s purpose: nonexistent. It’s fun factor: through the roof. I like this ad too. I always imagined the old money upper crust of society had a soft spot for Silly String.

But what I like even more are YouTube videos of people being lit on fire by Silly String which is, apparently, very flammable. See them after the jump.
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Submitted and Written by Janine P

I miss the old days when playgrounds weren’t all made of plastic. There were so many good pieces… the searing hot metal slides, the puke-inducing merry-go-rounds, the deathly “witches hat”, and any number of variations of Really Tall Metal Thing (usually welded into cute animal shapes) that kids could (and did) frequently fall off of.

At my primary school there was one particular contraption that injured more children than average. I dont know what it was called but it looked something like a Mayflower pole. A tall metal pole with a spinning circle at the top. Attached to the circle was about six chains with smaller metal rings at the bottom. The point was to get your friends hanging onto the small rings, everybody runs real fast in the same direction around the pole, and wheeeeeee! let yourself fly! Obviously this game was less dangerous in the winter when, if you accidentally let go, you could fly off into a relatively soft snowbank instead of the gravel. Yes, gravel, none of this “rubber chips” crap that playground have today.

Submitted by Sarah K

This stuff was awesome for making bubbles, but we had no idea you could roll it and make superballs out of it too! For such a simple concept, blowing a durable, catchable bubble was worth hours of entertainment.

Submitted by S Weiler

Our Hippity Hop experiences went something like this: bounce, bounce, bounce, OW!

Nice to see nothing has changed:

Submitted by M Johnson

We were thinking these were a safer (boo) alternative to the Metal Death Skates:

Photo via aw-wrdsmith.com

But now we’re not so sure after reading the Fisher Price website. What do they consider the appropriate age for the roller skates? Two to two-and-a-half years. Heck, we’re older than that and still don’t have the necessary co-ordination!

We’re not pretending to be childcare experts here at OUAW, but that sounds like a perfect recipe for “Baby’s First Emergency Room Visit.”