Mors Ab Alto

I remember the 1970s. Not in realtime, because I was too young and my memory is too sketchy. But I remember the 1970s much better after the fact, because the 1970s did not end on December 31st, no. And they didn’t end, entirely, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. No. The 1970s were a decade that wanted to hold on —
because the Boomers couldn’t acknowledge the idea that the Sixties were even farther away, I suppose — and that’s how I have most of my memories of the 1970s.

Take the game of death from above. Yes, we had a lawn dart set. The Regent Jarts, as I recall. The packaging looked like this. We had those things long after every other neighbor was concerned for their kids safety. I don’t remember them being played much really, probably for safety reasons, but I do remember them being in the basement.

They’d been banned before, but that was somehow overturned in court. And then the lawn dart manufacturing special interests lucked out and found a huge hit on their hands in the 1980s. But there were injuries, too many injuries, thousands of them when people started looking at the data, and at least one death. A grieving father worked tirelessly to get the things banned and, just before the issue was to be considered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, another child was put into a coma following a lawn dart accident.

So in 1988, just before Christmas, the things were banned in the United States. Soon after, Canada followed. Today, you can buy replacement parts, new metal points or the plastic fletching. But you can’t purchase the finished product.

You can, however, pick this up at Kroger:

map

I remember the 1970s. Back then, outdoor toys didn’t always use the word “fitness” as a marketing toy. That started in the 1990s.

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