Clackers

From ArticleWorld

Clacker is a toy that was briefly popular during the late 1990s as a fad. The appearance of this toy in stores marked the return of a fad from the 1970s that ended abruptly when clackers were no longer sold due to a perceived danger to the children who played with the toy.

A rather simple toy idea, the clacker consisted of two hard plastic balls, attached to 2 strings. Those two strings came together to be attached to a plastic ring. The goal of the toy was just to use simple hand-motion to separate the two marbles slightly and to “clack” them together. An advanced user could not only get the marbles to “clack” under their hand, but in the air above their hand as well.

The reason that the fad came to an end in the 1970s is that children were being hurt as a result of other children swinging their clackers carelessly.

The returned fad did not remain popular for long, perhaps because the parents of the 1990s were the same children injured in the 1970s. The difference between the toy produced in the 1970s and that produced in the 1990s was that the newer version was constructed without sting (a choking hazard to small children) and in stead with normally bright neon colored plastic triangles connected around a stick-like middle around which the smaller plastic marbles could freely rotate.