Cursed Commerce: Lawn Darts - Ep. 17

For decades, American families gathered in their backyards to throw giant metal spikes through the air and called it wholesome fun. What could possibly go wrong?

In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela trace the astonishing history of lawn darts, better known by the popular brand name Jarts. Beginning with a 1957 patent for a projectile that combined an indoor dart with a javelin, lawn darts were marketed as cheerful outdoor entertainment for the entire family. Millions of sets were sold, even as the supposedly harmless backyard game caused devastating head injuries, permanent disabilities, and the deaths of children.

Along the way, they examine the classic Saturday Night Live “Bag O’ Glass” sketch, the cheerful vintage advertising that described Jarts as a “missile game,” early attempts by the FDA to regulate them, and the manufacturers who insisted that consumers simply needed to play more carefully. Then they tell the heartbreaking story of seven-year-old and her father whose tireless campaign finally pushed the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Congress to ban sharp-pointed lawn darts decades after they first landed on the market and began their reign of terror..

Were lawn darts a cursed object, or simply the inevitable result of reckless design, corporate self-interest, weak regulation, and an American marketplace willing to sell almost anything?

Maybe cursed. Maybe not. Definitely a terrible idea.

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

*Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

Transcript

Daniel 0:00

Early Jart's branding leaned hard into cheerful backyard fun, basically. It was like vintage packaging. Phrases included such as Jart's missile game. They didn't try to hide it. It was a missile game. They've made it clear. Also, an outdoor game for the family.

Angela 0:14

For the family looking to prune a few off the branch.

Daniel 0:33

The podcast where we trace the flight path of bad ideas as they sail through the skies of unrestrained capitalism, arc right over common sense, and land point first, square in the middle of the American collective consciousness. I'm Daniel Stevens.

Angela 0:46

And I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:48

So, Angela, I will admit today my topic is a little bit of a stretch, but I think if you follow me, my logic as to how this is a cursed object lands.

Angela 0:59

I'm sure you'll be able to hit your mark.

Daniel 1:01

Yes. So just to say, uh I guess my my overall idea is American consumerism and capitalism are some insane forces in our life, and they convince us to do some pretty wild things.

Angela 1:16

Oh, um, wait.

Daniel 1:17

Do you think that's a good thing?

Angela 1:18

You're saying it's a stretch to say that American consumerism and capitalism is a curse upon all of us?

Daniel 1:23

I guess, yeah, that maybe it is a curse upon the case.

Angela 1:25

I don't think that's a stretch at all. Do you think that'd be rather cursed every single day by these little twatlords that have destroyed everything?

Daniel 1:34

I guess let's start with a question for you then. Do you have a particular purchase? Is there ever a moment where capitalism consumerism, your own, you know, you blinded yourself and you let a cursed item, maybe just a dumb purchase, something you regretted, but a cursed purchase enter your life? Or can you think of a time?

Angela 1:51

Well, maybe in Okay. I did impulse buy a black cat once.

Daniel 1:57

Oh, but that was the least cursed decision you ever made. Oh, either. Rafi was, yeah, the phone of a curse, a blessing.

Angela 2:03

He was the best. But it is sort of ridiculous that I am like impulse, but I never had a pet before and was just like, my roommate was like, Do you want to go to the humane society? And I was like, sure. And walk out with an entire living thing. My little black cat. And at times when he was uh yammering away at three o'clock in the morning and I felt a bit cursed, but no, overall, 10 out of a million out of ten, most solid animal to have ever lived, love of my life, Rafi cat. Rest in peace.

Daniel 2:34

Okay. But apart from that blessed purchase, you will, you know, you do see how sometimes Would you say it was blurred? I guess. No, no, no, he was truly just kidding.

Angela 2:44

I have his name tattooed onto my body. I love him with all my little heart and soul.

Daniel 2:48

Yeah, Rafi was the best. Um, okay, well, let's get into today's today's topic. We'll talk about the view though.

Angela 2:56

Do you have any purchases that are cursed or that you regret?

Daniel 3:00

When I was a kid, I used to get swept up in fads. Like I was into all the like yeah, I mean, I was a beanie baby collector. I was yeah, like that kind of stuff.

Angela 3:10

But that was like the joy of the 90s. That was so like it.

Daniel 3:14

When I was a kid, I was definitely a collector. The capitalism just like ran through me, and I was like, oh, I gotta buy all the things. So I was a huge collector. As an adult, I'm the opposite of that. Now I am more of a minimalist. I try to be like money is real.

Angela 3:26

I think that's have you ever seen that picture of the couple getting a divorce and they have the pile of beanie babies, and part of their divorce hearing is them rifling through it and like dividing up which beanie babies each of them gets.

Daniel 3:39

That is the cringiest but most amazing thing I've ever seen. And it's just can you imagine the inner monologue of all the people sitting there waiting as this stupid couple? It's like, first of all, they're never finding anyone else. That was their one shot was finding the other beanie baby freaks psycho.

Angela 3:56

And these are the last final moments of the only marital union either of these two will ever be able to marry.

Daniel 4:04

And I just I can't imagine the arguments they had over like, oh, I want that one. No, you can't.

Angela 4:10

Well, people thought, I mean, my grandma has like the Princess Diana bear that's supposed to be like worth $15,000 or something like that. But like there's no buyer's market. It's like an empty valuation.

Daniel 4:23

Yeah, I never went into it's gonna pay for my college. I just really liked the stuffed animals when I was in, you know, elementary school. Um, and I wanted them all.

Angela 4:31

Um I had a lot of them, like between my siblings and I, we had a lot of them too.

Daniel 4:35

But for today's cursed item, we're gonna talk about, and I hope you will all agree with me that this does fit the category of a cursed item, and and it fits to be a cursed-ish episode. But there's this old SNL skit that got me thinking about this idea. And I don't know if you've seen it. It plays a lot during like Christmas specials they'll do because it's from the 1976 Christmas episode. And in it, Dan Ackroyd, he plays this sleazy toy manufacturer, and he's hawking these like increasingly deranged gifts to an incredulous Candace Bergen who's interviewing him and questioning him on the safety of these toys. And that you know, there's things like the Johnny Switchblade Adventure Punk, the Teddy Chainsaw Bear, and then most famously, it culminates with the absolutely unhinged bag of glass. Have you ever seen this skit?

unknown 5:20

No.

Daniel 5:21

Oh my god, it's a classic. We'll have to post a link to it. Uh, I'll put one in the in the episode description, and maybe we'll maybe we'll post a link in one of our social clips or something like that. Essentially, he's this toy manufacturer and he's just selling a giant cellophane bag of shards of glass. And he just he's like, What? Well, kids don't like shards of glass. It's amazing. And it's like in the 1970s, even then, which was like this freewheeling lead paint seatbelt optional time, even that was comedy, like the idea of a toy that was a bag of glass. But it's like they were parodying a very real toy that wasn't that different, they didn't have to exaggerate that much to get to bag of glass because what we're talking about today are lawn darts. When boiled on to their essence, they're a giant metal spike that we handed to toddlers and told them to whip at each other across the lawn.

Angela 6:07

Okay, is no one litigious?

Daniel 6:08

Well, like the government will step in eventually, but for decades, many Americans were very familiar with and purchasers of this much-beloved and cursedly dangerous backyard game. It truly boils down to taking metal-tipped missiles, and the instructions were to hurl them into the air. There is a target involved, but that really who plays by the rules? It was just these metal spikes that you give to kids with fins on the back.

Angela 6:35

Honestly, the internet has ruined us because now people like have such a better understanding of all of the dangers and the amount at which people remember when you used to have to just like mail in a videotape to America's Funniest Home videos, and that was like all your meme content and all of your understanding of how dumb people are. So internet ruined things like lawn darts. We all could have just been having a lot more medieval fun out there justing with spikes in the back.

Daniel 7:06

The curse of lawn darts may not actually be behind us. I I do think there's there's potential for the TikTok generation to still have have lawn darts be a thing that that curses us. But we'll get to that. The idea itself, you talk about it, it sounds like a horrible idea. But also, on top of just it being an obvious bad idea, it has become this thing that there's a lot of urban legends about. There's this thing where it feels like almost everyone knows, like, oh, a cousin or a friend of a friend, or my grandpa had a set, or so and so. There's like everyone sort of knows a story of someone who took a lawn dart, I feel like. It's kind of this like American urban legend.

Angela 7:41

So, like, I wonder how many Lawnards games have been sold. Like, hundreds of thousands of people were just like, This sounds great.

Daniel 7:49

We'll get there's a number later of uh that I'll get to when they do a study, but millions and millions and millions of sets were sold. So they're they made it millions and millions of sets for decades, yes, were sold before the government really did anything about it.

Angela 8:03

God, humans, what are we doing?

Daniel 8:06

That's actually that's actually another urban legend is that they were fully banned and that they're illegal to own, and that like, you know, the government will confiscate them. That never did happen. The government did take action, but they are not illegal to own. They're not confiscated, they are still out there in the world. There's also this other weird urban legend, kind of like an inverse, like they're so dangerous the government banned them and took away. There's this other urban legend that I saw sometimes where people have this idea that they weren't ever actually dangerous. Like, oh, did you know lawn darts weren't actually sharp? And it's like, okay, I don't care. Get them and they're sharp. And second of all, even if they're not super sharp, they still are meant to be hurled at speed into the air and land sticking into the ground. They clearly are meant to pierce.

Angela 8:47

Yeah, they're meant to pierce. And also, like, have you stuck your finger in your eyeball? Your finger doesn't necessarily have the most pointy end ever, but things will not go well.

Daniel 8:57

So, yeah, there's like sometimes it almost feels like this is like backlash to this, like, oh, everyone's safety obsessed. Like, oh, we can't have fun anymore. And it's like they weren't even dangerous. And it's like, oh no, these were nightmares.

Angela 9:08

Like, gosh, this keeps coming up. Like, crack a book, play a board game.

Daniel 9:12

So those were there's like there's these weird concept, like concepts about it. And also there's tons of stories about like specific stories of usually children being maimed and killed by them. There's a lot of just urban legend nonsense stories, but we will get to a few documented cases that that were very influential in in the in what happened regulatorily with this.

Angela 9:35

Is it meant to be just like a child game, or is it kind of like um Cornhole where like you play it as adults together at a drinking event?

Daniel 9:44

You're getting slightly ahead of me, but that's actually an interesting part of the story is how they marketed it.

Angela 9:49

I've done this a lot. I need to just kind of sit and be quiet. You keep like, no, that's later.

Daniel 9:53

Yeah. Um they they did, they originally market it as a family game, and then at a certain point they had to start marketing it as an adult's only or at least adult supervision game. But it from the beginning, it was they should the boxes. I've got a picture, I'll show you. It's like little kids tossing them in like 1950s, like mid-century modern stylized box drawings. They're kind of great, but it was it says it's like fun for the whole family and everything. So it is it was marketed as a children's a game that children could at least be in the presence of, which uh seems insane.

Angela 10:25

It is wild to me how many things have happened in history, and yet still like we talk about this a lot, even like you know, wars that were happening. It's like humanity has watched people be hurt and maimed and all kinds of things in a million different ways over and over and over again, and yet we still just never figure it out.

Daniel 10:49

And what's it's funny you mentioned history because the last urban legend I was gonna talk about, I didn't realize was really an urban legend because when I started researching lawn darts, everywhere just kind of said this as a fact. But there's this idea, I I kind of found out I don't see any proof that this is true. A lot of people have this idea that lawn darts are based on this ancient Roman weapon called a plumbata. And I saw that like lots of articles just mention it like it's a fact, but I didn't actually see that anywhere in reality. But uh, yeah, a plumbata. Plumbata meaning lead plum is like, you know, a plumber is lead. So like the old it comes because they were heavy lead arrows that I mean soldiers would just uh use them to throw at people from a slight far distance before they engaged in hand-to-hand combat. So they look just like lawn darts. So I think there's this idea that someone says they copied them, but in the actual patent I found, so I found the patent from 1957 filed by Lawrence Barnett of Fort Edward, New York. He filed a patent for, quote, a projectile. So it's not really named yet, but just a projectile. Um, and it described a dart for outdoor field games, and it explicitly frames it as a hybrid of indoor darts and a javelin. You know, the javelin is like the the track and field speed.

Angela 12:04

Even just inside regular darts is like kind of a dicey game enough. You're literally tossing a little like chucking a needle through the air.

Daniel 12:13

That later they're gonna say one thing like, oh, well, we have bar darts everywhere, and it's like, yeah, with adults in bars where only adults are. Yeah. In the patent, the darts are described as 23.5 inches long. By the time they were being sold, they were only 13 inches long, so some shrinkage happened. Some Wait, sorry.

Angela 12:30

What? Holy crap. Like they were 23 inches long, and then they shortened them. That's like that's giving you like heft. Holy shit. You can put some oomph into that thing and kill an elephant.

Daniel 12:45

Yeah, and um, in his patent, he describes some of his problems he had to solve, and it seems like his main focus was making the darts sturdier and more able to take the damage. And it's like, dude, you should be thinking about the damage these will inflict. He literally says, quote, outdoor darts will receive considerably greater punishment and that they should be strong, rigid, and able to resist injury under normal use. He's not talking about the people, he's talking about the darts. So he's really worried about injuries to the darts.

unknown 13:18

Okay.

Daniel 13:19

It's like, dude, get your head in the game. What are you talking about?

Angela 13:24

Somebody needs to sue this man and sue him fast.

Daniel 13:26

Well, the government eventually steps in. Um, but so he takes this idea, he called them jarts. Uh that became their trademark name. That was a combination of dart and javelin. So you might hear people call them darts. It's become kind of a generalized trademark, you know, the whole like Kleenex becoming the word for tissues, jarts, kind of. Some people just call lawn darts jarts, but jarts are technically a specific brand version of lawn darts.

Angela 13:54

So more than one person got in the game and was like, oh, projectile murder devices. Let's get manufacturing.

Daniel 14:00

Tons of people saw that they were flying off the shelves and were like, Yeah, I have no concerns about selling death spears to children.

Angela 14:06

Do you think it's because it's been a long time since we last had a world war and people are just getting a little fidgety?

Daniel 14:12

Well, this was this was in the late 1950s. So World War II was only, yeah.

Angela 14:16

So they were just like, it's in my blood.

Daniel 14:19

Yeah. So like starting in the late 1950s, early 1960s, these were being marketed. Um, by 1971, darts were being sold across the US into Canada. The original inventor founded the RB Jarts Company, and this was uh based in South Glens Falls, New York. Uh, they their only product. I think there was this court document. I eventually, there's a bunch of court documents, spoiler alert, there's lawsuits about this kind of stuff. Uh there's one of the court documents describes the the as jarts as their only products. So I think this business, they they had all their eggs in the jarts basket. This one. Oh god. They were the law, they were like the most well-known lawn dart creator. Um they and like I said, they were selling them across US and Canada, which it's like Canada, sorry, couldn't even get away from Americans' bad ideas. They were like shipping off these lawn darts to Canadians. Oh god. Early Jarts branding leaned hard into cheerful backyard fun, basically. It was like vintage packaging, phrases included such as Jarts Missile Game. They didn't try to hide it, it was a missile game. They made it clear. Also, an outdoor game for the family.

Angela 15:32

For the family looking to prune a few off the branch.

Daniel 15:36

Yeah, and they would they are they marketed it like horseshoes, sort of like a similar game to horseshoes. Just they had they market it as just like this fun game that little kids could play, whatever. We're all responsible for our own safety. But the obvious started happening. I mean, I don't think I need to spell out. You give a bunch of people giant darts and tell them to throw them through the air, probably while you know, while being unsupervised, or if you're adults while drinking is happening. And the obvious thing started happening, a bunch of injuries were were being incurred by these. Um there was there's not a lot of like good data on this from the actual time. It seems like people were just turning a blind eye to it. But in a 1970 article, so it went from the late 50s all the way until 1970, and it kind of just seemed like it was a free-for-all. People were getting impaled, blinded, maimed, some killed. And it was not really like a major story. But eventually, the FDA, yes, the Food and Drug Administration, because for some reason in 1970, there was no other regulatory body to be in charge of something like this, so it just got like foisted onto the FDA, which is just sort of like, eh, let them deal with it. It's like not, I mean, it's neither food nor drug, it's a projectile toy. But either way, they did a study, and they did a study of 76 specific childhood injury patients from lawn darts, and they found that the most common sites of injury were 54% in the head, 17% eye, or 11% face. So really just awful injuries. Um long-term injuries included unilateral blindness and lifelong brain damage, and a 4% fatality rate as well of the 76 studied cases. So there is hard data that these were causing lifelong and life-ending injuries. Oh my god. And this was the FDA, remember, in 1970. They were doing a study because there were some complaints and there was this idea that hey, the government might regulate this. They had some specific examples in this study. Uh I'm gonna read a couple examples of like the types of injuries that would happen. Uh, these are anonymized, but these are apparently real case studies of things that happen. One example was two sisters aged six and seven were playing in their neighbor's lawn with some yard darts, so an off-brand jart. Um, the younger sister picked up one of the darts and threw it toward the ring target on the ground. The dart hit the elder sister near the eye, and the injury required 12 to 14 stitches, so a young girl impale near the eye. Um, another incident was while the parents of a young four-year-old child were inside uh eating dinner. Uh, the child was outside playing in his sandbox. Uh, when his 10-year-old brother and eight-year-old cousin nearby were playing with jarts, uh, the child in the sandbox was struck in the head and later died. In another incident, during a school picnic for seventh and eighth graders, two boys were playing with jarts. A 13-year-old girl uh at the picnic apparently decided to go move the target ring. And when she went to go do that, um, she was struck in the head by a dart which did uh hit and kill her. So there were two extremely well-documented deaths and many other well-documented injuries, lifelong at times main, you know, lifelong effects from these injuries.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

That's horrifying.

Daniel 18:57

Yes, truly, truly sobering stuff. And like the FDA is doing this. Like for some reason, that's the branch of the government that is even looking into this. Um, most of these injuries were recorded just in 1970, I guess. Um, the earliest was 1967. So even the decade, the early 60s, the mid-60s, the late 50s, when these were existing, there's really no record of any official, you know, incidents with these. But uh the government has said in that report, they said we believe this report to be a small percentage of the total number of of incidents. So you would think they banned them, but they did not at that point. At this point, they s they kind of you know, they they reached a compromise. In the early 1970s, the FDA classified sharp-pointed lawn darts as a mechanical hazard, duh, but instead of the outright ban that many were hoping for, they compromised and said basically, you can keep selling them, but you have to clearly label that they're not for children, and you have to include warnings and instructions for safe use. I don't see how there's any version of the use that's safe, because it feels like the intended use of incredibly dangerous.

Angela 20:02

Don't use it. Yeah. Safe use, put it back into the box, set a fire, put the box in the fire. Actually, that would probably still be dangerous. I'm not trusting any of these people who thought this was a good idea.

Daniel 20:15

Yeah, right. So they also said you had to, you could, they could no longer sell them in toy stores or toy departments. They had to become like a lawn game. They had to become more something like more like cornhole, kind of like you were asking. So it still just seems kind of wild to me that they didn't just take the government's authority and ban them at the time. It's like why they felt the need to err on the side of a lot.

Angela 20:37

Yeah, or am I getting ahead of us?

Daniel 20:39

No, I mean, there I I didn't see anything about like backhanded deals. I think maybe a the FTC.

Angela 20:45

Well, no, I mean like people are making money.

Daniel 20:46

Yeah, true. And and yeah, that I mean the government generally does not want to stifle industry, they don't want to they try to find like the government has to have a compelling interest for something, or like there has to be, they have to look at the harm of what they're gonna do. They can't just say we don't like it, we're gonna ban it. They have to say, well, what's the benefit people are getting? And they weigh it. But in this one, it's like there's other games. This game didn't exist before 1957, no one cares. So I it just seems wild to me that they didn't.

Angela 21:12

Bocce ball.

Daniel 21:13

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, like bocce ball, even kind of dangerous. You might you might take a bocce ball to the cranium if someone Batman Batman.

Angela 21:24

Um I mean volleyball, like you guys, hacky sack, like for fuck's sake, guys.

Daniel 21:30

So so then they they kept making darts, lawn darts, um, and but now they would have to sometimes there would still be like on the label, there'd be like families playing, but then be labels saying like for adult use only and like should only be used under supervision of adults.

Angela 21:45

One of them And one of the kids is like bent over on the side with like blood splurting out of their head.

Daniel 21:50

Yeah. One of the one of the safety instructions is to make sure never to throw darts when quote people or animals are near the target. And it's like, thank God Fido needs federal. Protection from American capitalists.

Angela 22:04

It's like, you know, when you see like a sign that's like, don't do this very explicit specific thing, and you're like, ah, something, something happened here. Oh, Fido. Fido.

Daniel 22:15

I can't remember the last time I heard of somebody use Fido as like the like generic dog name. Fido errex, I guess. Spot maybe. Spot, yeah. Uh-huh. But it's like, okay, so these warning labels, though, realistically, they're not doing much. No one reads warning labels. It's kind of like, it's sort of like it reminded me of that, those like cursed amulets in King Tut's tomb. Like they were there, they had the warnings, the tut, but like there was like there were a bunch of those warning labels. People still walked right into that.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Beware who moves my body.

Daniel 22:51

Our new slogan. Yeah. Um, if you're confused, go back and listen to King Tut episode eight and nine.

Angela 22:59

Yeah, lots of spicy little curses.

Daniel 23:02

And it seems like the company, at least the the main company, uh, they kind of just were like, Yeah, we're all responsible for our safety. This is no more dangerous than other things. Like I said, they they compared it to bar darts, and it's like, well, yeah, again, adults. Um, uh the guy, Robert Barnett, in in interview, he said kids can hurt themselves with bicycles and archery and rifles.

Angela 23:21

And these are all things we need to discuss. Like, as humanity.

Daniel 23:26

And he he also reportedly said, I'd rather be hit by a lawn dart than a horseshoe. And it's like, excuse me, but no, just no. A horseshoe is so much better, a little heavier, maybe, but yeah. Would you take a lawn dart?

Angela 23:43

Yeah, no, I would take the horseshoe. But yeah, like I think this falls deeply into our category of are we sure about that? Are you sure?

Daniel 23:51

Yeah, yeah. And so they kind of flirted with banning them, but by the, you know, into the 70s and into the 80s, lawn darts were kind of a ubiquitous product in American culture, and they weren't really a niche product, lots of people had them. Uh, and one thing that kind of like the last little twist of the curse, I would say, that really made it impossible to ignore is the fact that they started bundling lawn darts with other games into like family backyard fun sets. So even parents who would never have looked at a lawn dart and thought, oh, that's a great idea, they were like inadvertently getting these into their homes. And there's one extremely tragic case of a family that just that happened to. In 1987, a father named David Snow wanted a volleyball set. And at the store, there was a volleyball set, but it was combined with other stuff, and they just wanted the volleyball set, apparently. But they bought this combined set. In that set was was a pair or a set of lawn darts. Uh, they didn't really pay much attention to it. There was a warning on the individual lawn dart section, but it was a tiny little warning. They didn't think much of it. Uh eventually, sometime after that purchase, his seven-year-old daughter, Michelle, was playing in the front yard when her older brother and his friend were playing with the lawn darts in the backyard, and a lawn dart was thrown too hard, flew over the fence into the front yard, and pierced Michelle's skull. And then she was in the hospital for several days, and she was eventually pronounced brain dead and and passed away. So there's this family, they didn't think let's go buy lawn darts. They just like they they just went to the store and bought something that the American system told them was something they sh, you know, could have fun with. And then it eventually ended with a the tragic death of their seven-year-old daughter.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Oh god.

Daniel 25:45

Yes. Uh the David Snow unfortunately kind of becomes the hero of this story. It's I feel so horrible for him that this is where his life went. But he became an extreme advocate for childhood safety and toys, and specifically against lawn darts. He was an aerospace engineer himself. Uh uh, he eventually quit that job so he could focus 100% on his lobbying efforts, and he formed a foundation about childhood toy safety. He had some quotes in while he was working with trying to get the the government at this point, it would be the CPSC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This was created by a law in the 1970s, coincidentally. So they took over the FDA, was no longer the ones dealing with this. So he started lobbying with them. He he was quoted um but to the LA Times in 1987 after the death of his daughter and uh during his work saying, uh, I just want to get rid of these damn darts. These things killed my child. If I don't do anything, it's just a matter of time before someone else gets killed. I'm going to get them off the market whatever it takes. And it's like that's uh amazing because I the the ability for him not to just curl into a ball of grief after his daughter was killed and to say I'm going to protect others. He also did say during it was a long process. There was like he had to go get reports done, he had to go convince these boards that they had bad statistics. At one point, he was told by the CPSC that they only knew of a few dozen incidents, and he said, I am going to find you statistics, and he went and found thousands of cases from just the previous like six or seven years, and he like forced them to look at it and he said, You guys are just absolutely willfully ignorant. Yeah, at one point he did just say, Once I pick up a paper and see that they're banned, I'm going to crawl back under a rock and never talk about lawn arts again. So he just had this like slow, agonizing like obsession that was very warranted, but he eventually did get the government to take a look at it. And after he helped them make another study that showed that there were 6,100 documented cases, 81% under the age of 15, half under the age of 10. So this is over 3,000 under 10-year-olds sent to emergency rooms in a period of eight years alone. And they also found that the warning label guidelines were not being followed at all. Even when they were followed, they were very light guidelines. Even when they were being followed, they didn't help much, but they weren't even being followed. So they just found flagrant violations of those. And there was also that whole idea of like, are they toys or not? Apparently, like industry groups were trying to get and like foist lawn darts on each other. There was a the LA Times talked to a uh spokeswoman for the Toy Manufacturers of America. They declined to comment, but they did note that lawn darts must legally be sold as sporting goods. So the LA Times then went and talked to the National Sporting Goods Association. They also declined to comment. And they were like, yeah, those really fall more into the toy category. So, like, nobody wanted them at this point. It did seem like it was people were finally realizing what a bad idea they were.

Angela 28:50

It's crazy to me that it takes this much effort because you say lawn darts to me. I'm not some evolved human being. Well, maybe I am. I should give myself more credit. But you say it to me and immediately I'm like, yep, no. Can see totally the problem. Yeah. So, like, what was going on with people for so long and so many people that it was like, hey, I need to sit down and like show you statistical evidence why, like, yeah, like whipping a metal spike through the air might be problematic and dangerous. Like, why was everyone just like, I just don't see it? I just don't understand.

Daniel 29:28

Well, and they and they did it in 1970. They did it, they had, they thought about it. Like someone was thinking about it, and instead of the obvious choice, they literally were like, Well, we'll just label them.

Angela 29:39

I mean, it's it's it's not like it like it's not like you like hit it into the ground and oil spurts out, like there's nothing to be had.

Daniel 29:49

Like, I know, yeah, and okay, so they did eventually federal law banned it in 1988. So that's we've come to this point. I mean, it it was 15 years till 1970 when they said, okay, maybe we should put labels on this under under reaction of the century, and then it was another 17 years, and it took publicized death, and it took this dad dedicating his life to it, his his daughter's lives was his daughter's life was taken, and then he had to give up his life and like spend all his time, and then finally they did do it. So it took all of that. Is it's like so frustrating to believe that it took that much work.

Angela 30:26

Do you think there was some like post-World War desensitization going on that maybe then post-Vietnam war desensitization? Because I feel like I just don't understand how people were so blasé and like so just like I it might just be American culture. They were still using lead paint. Like when I was in Pompeii, uh they were they have lead pipes everywhere, and like the life expectancy was like 37. Uh that's not a sign, that's not like a proven fact. But like life expectancy was lower because all like the lead in the pipes, and it was like it took us thousands of years to figure that shit out. Like lead paint in the walls, lead pipes. Like, why are people so dumb?

Daniel 31:15

But that's not an obvious bad idea. That doesn't seem like not throwing darts for pastimes that can pierce your skull. That seems like a straightforward idea. Figuring out that lead is bad for you. I understand it took centuries.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

I guess that's fair.

Daniel 31:29

But okay, so we're let's I just want to go through real quick the actual process of banning it because how many years did it take? So Michelle Snow was killed in 1987, her father works for a year plus to get it by 1988. The CPSC did agree that three children documented cases of deaths of children, and hundreds of lawn dart injuries were being treated a year. They agreed on all that. There was the week they were going to vote, of another case of an 11-year-old girl in Tennessee who was struck in the head with a lawn dart and put into a coma happened. So it was just like like a a moment as they were about to vote on banning. The universe was like, you know, yeah, you guys again, comment. Yeah. Even after that, it was still of the three-person commission, it was still a two-to-one vote to ban. So one person still was like, oh no, no, no, we should not be banning these. America needs these. And that's one of the things is in this like court document, in their decision, it's like, the only thing we're missing out on is recreation. There are alternatives. There's no harm to anyone except for the company selling them to not have these anymore. And it's wild that it took decades for someone to be like, yeah, this is totally reasonable for the government to do. So that was the CPSC. They they voted to ban it. And then Congress for good measure actually passed a law and it was signed into law just to officially make sure lawn darts would always be banned. No further regulation could undo it. That was um enacted it as HR 552 in the 100th Congress. It was signed into law on November 5th, 1988. It was made as an act to provide that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would amend its regulation regarding lawn darts within 60 days. And it also worded it as lawn darts and similar sharp-pointed toys. So it just is an umbrella ban of all types of toys like this. So no sneaky little business from the darts companies making like, oh, we're gonna make jerts or something. Like it's just like it's not the name, it's not that they're called lawn darts, it's just any sharp-pointed toy basically can be regulated in this way. So it's like finally, it only took it only took 30 years from after the day these were patented. The patent office should have been like, cool idea. Nope.

Angela 33:43

Sounds lovely. Goodbye.

Daniel 33:45

Yeah. And so the final federal law went into effect on December 19th, 1988. I do wonder if some uh absolute psychos like made a run for the toy stores to get like last-minute Christmas gifts, and they're like, ah, the government's taking our freedom, our lawn darts. I mean, there've gotta be people who made a rush for those last forbidden cursed lawn darts, right?

Angela 34:08

You can go on eBay right now and for like $20,000 buy like the last run of the original deadly lawn jars.

Daniel 34:16

Nope. You can't you can't buy that, you can't buy them on eBay. eBay will eBay immediately takes down a listing. You do you can't do that.

Angela 34:23

But you can get the Dybak boxy. You could literally buy a cursed object that yeah.

Daniel 34:30

Well, okay, that and that sort of brings me to one of my little final little points about like how this curse how this curse exists. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Final little points. Okay.

Daniel 34:42

Yeah. Um so in that in the decisions about what to do to ban the and in the studies about all the injuries, they did include an estimate of how many sets remain in American homes. So millions and millions were sold from the time they started being marketed in the late 50s, early 60s, up until the time they were banned in the late 80s, countless millions were sold. They estimate at least 10 to 15 million sets are were still in American households at the time. So those are and that like I said, the government didn't actually confiscate or ban owning them, they just banned the further sale of them. So those sets are all sitting in like a bunch of boomers, basements, and garages. Like, are we all about to inherit like when we clean out all of our parents? And like maybe the TikTok generation is about to see this new wave of OG Lawn Dart inside.

Angela 35:32

I feel like we know better by well, I mean, I hope we know better by now.

Daniel 35:37

We would think we know better, but in May of 1997, so nine years after that, after the original ban, the CPSC did reissue their warning about lawn darts and reiterated to people to dispose of old sets and to not play with them because there was at the time there was another incident from a from a child who was playing with an old set. So these they they've banned them, but they're still a danger. I mean, we juice we really do need to just rely on the common sense of nothing.

Angela 36:07

What do you think the over-under is that there my parents definitely don't have any lawn darts, but what do you think the over-under is that in your parents' garage there is a dusty old set waiting, just watching and waiting.

Daniel 36:17

I don't think there couldn't maybe there could have been one by way of my grandparents, but that probably would have wound up in like one of my aunts or uncles' houses over my dad's, I think.

Angela 36:26

I don't know, but yeah, I kind of can picture your dad with a set of lawn darts in his possession.

Daniel 36:30

Well, and and nowadays they do they do sell lawn darts. You can go buy lawn darts, but they're like fun little, they're like plasticky. I've got some pictures of them if you want to look at it.

Angela 36:38

Yeah, I was scrolling through and we'll we'll put these on our social so you can see the evolution. Did you see those last yeah?

Daniel 36:43

Did you see that last one?

Angela 36:44

Somebody wised up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

Those are very last ones.

Angela 36:48

They've been made quite impotent. Uh no, they're kind of like a nerf, a nerf gun or like a nerf thing now. Yeah. Round tip. They had to in red, bright red. Will not kill.

Daniel 37:03

Will not kill. Will not maim. Um will not lore your fucking brain. And I guess to me, the the the way that I was able to look at this and say this is a cursed-ish episode is because this isn't some accident. This isn't some like unintended, unforeseeable thing that people did with a product or a way a product became dangerous. It is the product itself. It is how it was intended to be used. It's how it's being used on the box is the way that it caused death and destruction. And most like cruelly of all, a lot of the incidents were from bystanders. It wasn't even people playing the game, it's people play who were doing something nearby, someone playing the game. So there's not even an element of like, oh, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, or anything like that. It's and the people who didn't even go out and buy it, they bought a volleyball set and it's snuck into their house.

Angela 37:51

It's Daniel U Swifty. Um, but yeah, um Why am I a Swifty? You just said uh Taylor Swift lyric.

Daniel 38:03

Oh gosh. I did it was unintentional. I don't know which I still don't know what I said.

Angela 38:08

It's waiting to burst out of you ever since you did our first episode, episode 13. We're like running like the this is like the school yearbook of all of our episodes today. Uh no, but I agree with you that I think that there is a such category of just curse of dum-dum. Like maybe we kind of every once in a while have an episode that's just like the curse of the dum-dums. Like somebody was thinking this was a good idea, enough people thought this was a good idea for it to sell millions and millions. It's curse of stupidity. And now children have died.

Daniel 38:39

Yeah, I would say the other curse is like the lack of government action, too. It's just like there was this rampaging elephant in the room, and it was like the people who had the elephant killing gun were like, oh, I don't know. Like it's just like I I can't believe it made it through the 1970, you know, process, and then they the compromise is wild. And it's just because it it's just one of those things where it's like they didn't try to hide what this was, it was just a flagrantly dangerous premise, and they were selling it to kids.

Angela 39:11

Because it's actually a a different podcast that I listened to a few years back that made me kind of come to this realization that, like, oh no, like common sense is incredibly hard to get people to like legislate around. Do you remember the podcast about Dr. Dunch? Like the doctor who literally was like like a spinal doctor he like severed his friend's head almost and put him, like paralyzed him. And it took so much effort to get this man out of operating rooms when he had like a very running track record, like literally the doctor who who initially like who eventually was like, holy fucking shit, um, watched him drop a screw into someone and just like be like, oh do, and like not care, and like do an entire like very easy operation. Like he had to stop him multiple times and be like, holy crap, stop. Um, and it was such an uphill battle for him to get through. So it's like, I feel like I lost all faith in the system in that episode.

Daniel 40:15

Um Yeah, that's I mean we we were like we assume these we res we assume these systems are gonna protect us in our modern. Which that was doctrine, right? Yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. Um, and it it that's maybe that's the curse that another angle of the curse is where we trust these systems to to actually protect us, but when they're actually tested, they don't actually really do much.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Yeah. Oh god, that could be episode on episode on episode.

Daniel 40:44

I kind of feel like there's there's more instances of this now that I'm gonna start looking at those.

Angela 40:50

If we go down this path and have more episodes, because I can think of a bunch already, uh, we're gonna be retirement age with new episodes coming out of the cursed-ish podcast.

Daniel 41:00

But yeah, I I guess uh we can we can probably kind of call American what capitalism, American consumerism, all of the above. I'd call those pretty cursed-ish.

Angela 41:11

Dude, I feel like we could go like we could have a whole uh we could have like a whole thing where we just like rail against the system and just like curse capitalism and just like story after story until we build a revolution and we take it all down. Uh what if, yeah, you heard it here first, the American Revolution begins today.

Daniel 41:34

Yeah. But for now we'll just have to settle before I change the world. For now we'll just have to settle on calling Lawn Darts cursed-ish.

Angela 41:43

Yes, definitely. I'm not even, we don't even need to ask ourselves like maybe cursed or maybe not. Yeah. I'm voting cursed-ish, but cursed. There we go.

Daniel 41:54

Maybe cursed, maybe not.

Angela 41:56

We'll see you guys next week.

Daniel 42:06

Cursed-ish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at cursedish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at curstish all one word.com