Some of the strangest toys of the 1970s disappeared because their joke wore thin; others are remembered in museum collections, while a few left stores after serious safety concerns. The Pet Rock, Clackers, Jarts lawn darts and Parker Brothers’ Riviton show four very different ways a toy can fade from everyday play.
Why these toys faded in different ways
“Faded into history” does not mean all four toys were banned or vanished for the same reason. The Pet Rock was a short-lived novelty; Clackers are now chiefly represented here by a museum object record, which does not establish why their popularity declined. Jarts faced a US sales prohibition, while Parker Brothers pulled Riviton sets from stores after a fatal choking incident. Those distinctions matter: a fading fad, a documented safety action and a toy’s later status in a collection are not interchangeable stories.
The strangest toys of the ’70s
| Toy | What children did | Why it stood out | What the record says about its later history |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pet Rock | Treated a smooth stone like a pet, with a humorous manual. | The joke was selling an ordinary rock as a pet, complete with carrier-style packaging. | The Strong dates the idea to 1975 and says the fad reached stores around the country within months. No precise sales total is established in that account. |
| Clackers | Swung two balls attached to nylon and a ring handle so they struck together above and below the hand. | The simple action produced the toy’s signature clacking sound. | Edinburgh Museums and Galleries has an object dated 1975. Its record does not give a verified reason the toy later faded from mass popularity. |
| Jarts lawn darts | Threw oversized darts toward a ground ring, in a lawn game compared with horseshoes. | The darts had sharp metal tips, making an ordinary backyard game hazardous. | The Strong says the US Consumer Product Safety Commission prohibited their sale in 1988 after many injuries and multiple deaths. The exact death total is inconsistent across the Strong’s accounts. |
| Riviton | Joined construction pieces with rubber rivets and a gun-like tool that could also fire the rivets. | It combined a building set with a launcher-like tool—and small parts that posed a choking hazard. | The Strong reports Parker Brothers pulled nearly one million sets from stores in 1978 after a child choked to death on a rivet. This was a reported company pull, not a government ban. |
Pet Rock: a pet with no care required
Gary Dahl, a California advertising man, came up with the Pet Rock idea in 1975, according to The Strong National Museum of Play. The product turned the absence of an actual pet into its punchline: a smooth stone arrived in a small cardboard box designed to resemble a pet carrier, nestled in wood shavings and accompanied by a “Pet Rock Training Manual.”
The gag caught on quickly. The Strong says the fad spread to stores around the country within months. Its account does not establish a precise number sold, so the scale is best described by that documented rapid spread rather than an unsourced sales figure.
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Clackers: two balls and a loud payoff
A 1975 Clackers object in the Edinburgh Museums and Galleries’ Museum of Childhood collection consists of a red and a blue ball attached by nylon to a plastic ring handle. A child swung the balls apart and together, making them clack as they moved above and below the hand.
The sound and motion made the toy memorable, but the collection record does not document why Clackers fell out of favor. It supports a specific description of how the toy worked and a date for the surviving object—not a claim that it was banned or that one event ended its popularity.
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Jarts: a lawn game with sharp metal points
Jarts, or lawn darts, borrowed the aim of horseshoes and shifted it to oversized darts thrown toward a ring on the ground. The Strong’s 2015 account of unusual playthings describes their sharp metal tips. That combination made a backyard game dangerous in a way a soft ball or ring was not.
The Strong says the US Consumer Product Safety Commission prohibited Jarts sales in the United States in 1988 following many injuries and multiple deaths. The institution’s accounts conflict on the death count, so a precise number is not reliable here. A separate Strong object record hosted by Google Arts & Culture describes the prohibition as covering manufacture, sale and resale. This is the clearest example in this group of a toy leaving the market through a government safety action; original pointed lawn darts should not be treated as an ordinary collectible to use.
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Riviton: building with a launcher-like tool
Parker Brothers advertised Riviton as a “Toy That Makes Toys,” a construction set whose pieces were joined with rubber rivets. The tool that drove them looked like a gun and could also fire the rivets, giving the building toy an unusually projectile-like feature.
The Strong reports that Parker Brothers pulled nearly one million sets from stores in 1978 after a child choked to death on a rubber rivet. The figure describes sets pulled from stores, not units sold. And unlike Jarts, the documented action here is a company’s retailer pull—not a government prohibition.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Not every memorable ’70s toy disappeared
Oddness did not guarantee obscurity. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s decade-by-decade toy guide describes Weebles as an iconic toy of the decade. Their weighted bases helped them right themselves, matching the advertising slogan quoted by the museum: “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.”
The V&A also notes that Mettoy introduced the Space Hopper to the UK in 1968, before it became a huge craze in the 1970s, and that the original orange design later returned in remakes. These examples complicate any story in which the decade’s unusual toys simply vanished: some endured or came back, while the four above became associated with a fad, a collection record or a safety-driven exit.
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Sources and scope
This is a selection of documented examples, not a ranking or an exhaustive list of unusual toys from the 1970s. The core accounts are from The Strong National Museum of Play, Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures also offers broader context on toys of the 1970s. A 1971 Congressional Record list mentions lawn-dart products among toys associated with inadequate labeling; that contemporary listing is not evidence for the later 1988 prohibition.
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