Wednesday, June 18, 2008

It's Happy Fun Ball!

Okay, so it's not Happy Fun Ball. While we're fairly certain that the subject of today's article probably shouldn't be taunted, we're also pretty confident that it's not made of a material that "fell to Earth, presumably from outer space". However, we can't really say that we're shocked at the notion of the toy in question being banned. After all, the name alone conjures up some pretty bad imagery.

The toy is called the Fire Footbag.

That's right. A toy, for children, with the word "fire" right in the name. If it helps, the fire isn't just a clever marketing name. Oh no. The footbag is actually intended to be lit on fire.

Yep. A toy that gets kicked from child to child (or, more accurately, hippie to hippie or stoner to stoner) has moved from being a simple bean-filled crocheted ball to being a flaming projectile of pain. Even better, the footbag wasn't simply meant to be lit on fire by itself. Oh, no, first it needs to be soaked in a flammable liquid.

The kicker behind this? People didn't realize it was dangerous until AFTER reports of burns started appearing. Listen, folks, we can understand that maybe people didn't see the inherent danger in something like Jarts when they first came out. After all, how many people would knowingly run under a sharp, metal-tipped dart the size of a dachshund (the answer, as it turns out, is a surprisingly high number)? But a bag soaked in fuel and lit on fire? For people to kick at each other? And they couldn't see the inherent problems?

Or maybe they could, and the toy got banned before they could roll out the second phase, with instructions on how to play the fun new game, "Stop, Drop, and Roll".

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