5 Horrifically Unsafe Baby Products from History
These days, baby products go through rigorous safety testing. Before they’re ever put in the hands of infants and their ruthless talent for self-destruction, they’re reviewed for any possible health risk. But this wasn’t always the case. Just decades ago, people were perfectly happy to order “Throat-Sized Teething Balls” and the like for their child out of the back of a catalog. In fact, for many years, they were sucking down toy parts like it was leaded gasoline exhaust.
Here are five baby products of yore that were particularly badly conceived…
Baby Car Hammock
Public Domain
Modern car seats are a celebration of momentum-stopping restraints. They follow lots of regulations and make the baby look like it’s trying to break the sound barrier, not just tag along to the grocery store. A couple decades ago? Not so much. For example, this hammock designed to be strung up inside a moving car. Of course, if you get in a collision, it suddenly becomes a baby slingshot.
Baby Alice Thumb Guard
Public Domain
Discouraging thumb-sucking is important as a child ages. Preferably, their fingers are no longer the snack of choice by the time they go to school, unless you’re fine with being that kid’s parent. Still, thumb-sucking might be embarrassing, but it’s unlikely to physically harm the child unless they’ve got a seriously crazy fingernail situation going on. Unless you chose to try the “Baby Alice Thumb Guard,” which was literally a bunch of metal wire wound around your baby's thumb, a setup that seems guaranteed to cause cut gums, questionable circulation or both. And what if your baby loves the taste of metal? What then?
Window Cages
Public Domain
Tired of worrying about your children’s safety while working around the home? Know that they’re in no danger by, uh, hanging them out of a window. In the 1920s, these wire cages that extended outside of apartment windows were a popular way to give children a little fresh air — and a lifelong fear of heights. After all, who knows what mischief they could get into indoors. Much better to have them living the life of a New York City air conditioner, huffing ancient car exhaust.
Mercury Teething Powder
Public Domain
Teething is an unpleasant process, especially given its body-horror adjacent nature. It’s probably for the best that none of us remember it, because a constant full-scale mouth-ache doesn’t seem particularly fun. In decades past, one treatment would be teething powders, such as Dr. Moffett’s, which contained calomel, a type of mercury. Yes, that mercury. Eventually, they fell out of favor because it was found that the mercury mouth powder was, shockingly, causing pink disease, a form of mercury poisoning. At least the mercury-poisoned babies were much quieter, I guess.
Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup
There was more than one way to soothe a teething tot’s pain, however. Another popular remedy was “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” which was, thankfully, entirely mercury-free! There was no need to include calomel, because it was perfectly effective on the strength of its main active ingredient: morphine. I’ve had morphine at a hospital before, and let me tell you: give me a bottle of the stuff, and all my teeth can grow in and be immediately pulled out, for all I’d care.
Look at that baby on the bottom left. The guy is absolutely flying off the tooth syrup. Oh, and it was also full of alcohol.
