15 Everyday Products That Started Out Way More Hardcore

If you have access to an electronic device on which to read these words, odds are pretty good that you’re entirely too safe. These days, we’ve got all kinds of government agencies and legislative bodies dedicated to making sure we don’t accidentally poison or maim ourselves through anything but our own stupidity. You’re comfortably cocooned within the nice, warm bubble of the nanny state.

That’s nice and all, but it can make you long for the days of the industrial wild west, when everything was made of sharp, rusty metal and you could buy Schedule II controlled substances at the local soda shop, or even antiquity, when we thought germs were ghosts. Sure, literally everyone from that time is dead now, but only some of them were killed by early versions of stuff you probably have in your home right now. What didn't kill our forefathers only made them stronger, and now they are unstoppable.