You want to know how old I am?
When I was a kid my parents got me a plastic maze game from the grocery store. It was comprised of two halves, a red plastic lower shell and a clear plastic upper shell which had maze walls molded into it. The point of the game was obviously to tilt and tumble it around to get the ball from the start to the finish.
Except.
The ball was a goddamn blob of mercury.
Many of the ends of the walls were deliberately V shaped so if your mercury blob hit one it’d get split, part of it going down one path and part of it going down the other. So then you’d have the added challenge of either bringing them back together or separately getting two or more progressively smaller segments of it to the finish. This was an interesting and highly amusing take on the usual kiddie maze-game concept if it weren’t for the fact that the ball was a goddamn blob of mercury.
Can you imagine if such a thing were made today and handed to children? There would be a riot. 60 minutes would do a hard hitting prime time exposé. The Biden administration would take out the factory making them with a drone strike.
Yeah I had a mercury maze, it was second hand but somehow ended up in my toy collection. It isn’t that dangerous, but you’re right that it wouldn’t get made nowadays.
unless its thrown down a flight of stairs onto hard wood, Oopises! now you got a mess of mercury all over the floor! What a mess! you need asbestos mop! the only number one recommended mop 3 years in a row! /s
I was scientifically-minded enough to know the mercury should probably stay in the maze, even if the point of a maze is to find your way out of it. That was the cruelest part actually. Even if the mercury made it out of the maze, it was still in a plastic prison. Brings a tear to my eye.
Amazeballs.
Lead was probably added to make the colors brighter too
I am that old, but I am not this old:
.I know it would probably give me cancer, but i’d still play with that today.
Would play that while waiting for the doctor. They always had it in the waiting room.
Which was pretty clever, really. It would make absolutely sure all the kids there for checkups would get strep throat from the sick kids, and the office would bring in more money.
Yes :-/
Greetings, fellow geezer!
Damn you. I’m only 42.
Hello fellow 80s/90s children.
I was only born in the 90’s and those were still around in the 00’s.
I just bought one for my toddlers…
I’ve always wanted one of these toys as a PC waterloop reservoir. The playfull aesthetic would be amazing!
confined to only a small reservoir or flowing into the coolant loop? the former is harder because you have to swirl the water without getting the rings stuck on or clogging the outlet valve.
Initially just the reservoir. Maybe using a diagonal filter to push the rings aside to prevent the rings entering the loop?
I have to be honest I’ve never acutly thought out the logistics as it seemed impossible to do. The reservoir needs to be custom made and as far as I know no one provides a service like this
You could play for 15 minutes and feel like you were speedrunning carpal tunnel and arthritis.
well fuck that explains a lot
older
Horse shoes old here.
Yeah my grandpa used to get us out in the backyard for that too
“need recreation variety”
Hey we also played croquet a lot
I’m quite young and I have used these multiple times. They probably still exists.
I have a new one and I had one when they came out back in the day
Yes, yes I am.
I remember seeing this around the cash registers at Burger King as a way to win a free sandwich.
I never won.
Ugh yes. And it was awful.
I never understood this “game”. From what I remember it’s just pure chance.
Sounds like a skill problem. /S
Nah, long enough car trips you figure out how to not only stack all the rings, but in correct rainbow order.
I’m so sorry for your loss! no human should have to go through that! /s
You’re pushing the button too hard.
I’m so old this isn’t the 1st time I have seen this image
I noticed my indicator was still blinking a minute or so after I changed lanes.
