Why Sky Dancer Dolls Were Way More Dangerous Than You Thought
Ask most girls born who grew up in the 1990s and they've probably heard of the Sky Dancer toys. These were fairy dolls that stood on a small pedestal-like object. There was a long string that kids pulled, sending the dolls spinning into the air like a helicopter. It was beautiful. It was dainty. It was dangerous.
Sky Dancers were so dangerous that in 2000, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) ordered the recall of 8.9 million Sky Dancer toys. The regulatory agency said the company that made Sky Dancers, Galoob, received 170 reports of the dolls hitting people, resulting in 150 injuries ranging from scratched corneas, temporary blindness, and chipped teeth to broken ribs, a mild concussion, and facial lacerations that required stitches.
People who owned Sky Dancers know full well how dangerous they are — and fun. It's still a toy, after all. Mashable even played with some vintage Sky Dancers, and indeed the toys remain as unpredictable as ever. They were supposed to fly upwards and gently fall, but this didn't happen a lot. Plus, if you lived in a house with ceiling fans and owned one of these toys? Oof. It didn't go well.
They did more than just poking an eye out
Galoob, the company that made Sky Dancers before being purchased by Hasbro, started selling the dolls in 1994. They got so popular that an animated series with the same name aired in 1997, explained Mashable. The show followed students at the High Hope Dance Academy under the tutelage of Queen Skyla, where their spinning powers were used as weapons. The show lasted one season. In 1996, a Sky Dancer toy marketed to boys was launched, according to Ad Age, because that was a time when toys had to appeal to only one group of children.
After the recall, Sky Dancers disappeared from the shelves. But that didn't mean the end of Sky Dancers. Girls and boys who owned the dolls and didn't return them to Galoob can now sell their toys to collectors. When Sky Dancers were first sold, they were priced at around $8-$25, per the CPSC. These days, a vintage Sky Dancer can fetch up to 64 British pounds (or about $82), reported The Sun.
So while Sky Dancers inspire a lot of nostalgia, let's hope that the memories don't include an emergency room visit because one of the dolls took out your dad's eye.