…and likely won’t ever find at a flea market either…

Okay…never mind they stopped making them a year before I was even born.  Dang!   What boy wouldn’t love to have his own nugget of U-238 to play around with?

In 1951, A.C. Gilbert introduced his U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, a radioactive learning set we can only assume was fun for the whole math club. Gilbert, who Americanmemorabilia claims was "often compared to Walt Disney for his creative genius," had a dream that nuclear power could capture the imaginations of children everywhere. For a mere $49.50, the kit came complete with three "very low-level" radioactive sources, a Geiger-Mueller radiation counter, a Wilson Cloud Chamber (to see paths of alpha particles), a Spinthariscope (to see "live" radioactive disintegration), four samples of Uranium-bearing ores, and an Electroscope to measure radioactivity.

And what nuclear lab for kids would be complete without an Atomic Energy Manual and Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom comic book? (The latter was written with the help of General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project.)

How Dagwood Splits the Atom would have fit in just swell with my copy of Classics Illustrated Adventures In Science…

Sigh.  I guess the world I grew up in was a different place.  Mr. Atom was our friend…do-it-yourself bomb shelters in the backyard notwithstanding.  I guess I’ll never have the atomic energy lab I always wanted for Christmas.  But…at least I have my radioactive Fiestaware…

More from Radar Online’s The Ten Most Dangerous Toys of All Time…Here.  I did manage to talk mom into getting me that nifty Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun though.  Wish I still had it.  Seriously…you would not believe some of the things kids were allowed, even encouraged to play with once upon a time.  Get me started on cap gun rolls sometime…