You'd attach a garden hose to the Water Wiggle and it would flail randomly around on a jet of water, as in this vintage commercial
Unfortunately, this posed a threat to small children and killed two before it was withdrawn from the market in 1978.
Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962)
11 Comments
ladicius@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 3d
How did that thing kill children? Made them stumble into a pit or something? Because I can't imagine this flimsy device to do more than maybe give a black eye.
EnmebaraGuesser@piefed.ca · 13 pts · 3d
Looks like somehow(?) the head came off, and two children drowned ('75 and '78) when the exposed nozzle got caught in their mouth. US Consumer Product Safety Commission recall here.
I'll guess the shape of the exposed nozzle when that happened made it easy to get into a kid's mouth, but hard to get out. Kids are prone to drinking from fountains and hoses. Not the same, but to illustrate the asymmetry of insertion and removal, that is also true of spherical shapes close to the size of a mouth. A large-ish sphere is easy to get into a mouth, and hard to get out. Couple that with panic of a drowning 3 year old.
Perhaps Wham-O could have redesigned it to remove that risk, but looks like it was just pulled from the market completely.
ladicius@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 3d
Weird. Weird, weird, weird. Those kids died the most bizarre deathes I ever heard of. Drowned on a dry lawn...
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 5 pts · 2d
You only giggled when it whacked the shit out of your friends. It stopped being funny when you got whacked yourself.
Reverendender@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 3d
Drowning I did not expect. But I would not have been surprised if this had put numerous children’s eyes out.
EnmebaraGuesser@piefed.ca · 5 pts · 3d
Same. Before I looked it up, I was thinking maybe choking after a hose got wrapped around a kid's neck. Or getting hit by the garden hose part. High pressure uncontrolled hoses can be dangerous to full grown adults, and while this would be much lower pressure, 3yo's are fragile.
I didn't even have drowning on my radar as a possibility. That would also make it impossible for the kid to cry out for help.
Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 3d
Seemed odd, the toy way disassembled and was turned on then got lodged in a kid's mouth and he drowned.
Series of unfortunate events.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d
Sounds more like final destination to me. Just complete Rube Goldberg nonsense.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d
This ad claims its from 1986 - it does look later than 1978, maybe they did bring it back?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY1cKq5b9R4
solidheron@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 3d
They really didn't think about choking hazard back them
Sxan@piefed.zip · -2 pts · 3d
It worked pretty well as advertised, too. Þe flying around effect wasn't much of an exaggeration.