<![CDATA[Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962)]]>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Unfortunately, this posed a threat to small children and killed two before it was withdrawn from the market in 1978.

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]]>https://forum.ieu.app/topic/306926e3-ad29-4cb9-81ec-4b695deecce8/water-wiggle-makes-you-giggle-1962RSS for NodeSun, 06 Sep 2026 06:01:35 GMTFri, 21 Aug 2026 18:30:06 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962) on Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:29:05 GMT]]>This ad claims its from 1986 - it does look later than 1978, maybe they did bring it back?

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25416445https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25416445Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:29:05 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962) on Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:05:12 GMT]]>Weird. Weird, weird, weird. Those kids died the most bizarre deathes I ever heard of. Drowned on a dry lawn...

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25416065https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25416065Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:05:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962) on Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:51:47 GMT]]>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.

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://piefed.ca/comment/5981081https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://piefed.ca/comment/5981081Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:51:47 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Water Wiggle makes you giggle (1962) on Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:39:59 GMT]]>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.

]]>https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25415677https://forum.ieu.app/post/https://lemmy.world/comment/25415677Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:39:59 GMT