Kids' Chemistry Sets: KABOOM!
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. Jerry's here, too, floating around somewhere out there, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. That's right. You thought of this one, and Dave helped us out with the research on chemistry sets. I will go ahead and just say that I never had a chemistry set. You know darn well that somebody in my family did.

Was it Scott? Of course he did. He was voted most likely to have a chemistry set in preschool. Did he do anything magical with it? No, I mean, I just remember him having it and it being around the house. And, you know, he's just always had a more scientifically minded brain than me and has always been smarter than me from the drop. So he he was into chemistry sets and I was into, you know, baseball cards.

I was into baseball cards, too. I was going to say don't feel bad because I didn't have a chemistry set either, but I did have like an electrical set, like the electrical version of a chemistry set. Oh, yeah. You can do all sorts of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I distinctly remember just hitting it with a hammer because I had no idea what was going on with that thing. You can't build a circuit? No. No.

You could put a gun to my head and be like, build a circuit, and I'd just start hitting it with a hammer, I think. You know who got good at that is a friend of the show and pal of ours in real life, David Reese. Oh, yeah? He got into circuitry and, like, building and refurbishing old, like,

uh, musical electronics and pedals and stuff like that. What an interesting dude. If you don't know who Dave Reese is, go look up. What's the name of his book about artisanal pencil sharpen? I think it's how to, how to sharpen pencils. He also had a great TV show that I'm not sure if you can find it, but you can try called going deep with David Reese. Man is so good. Um, but you know, it's like how to shake someone's hand, stuff like that. It seems very intuitive, but not through David's odd point of view. He,

He also was on Dicktown with Hodgman, right? That's right. And he can build the heck out of a circuit. I bet you he had a chemistry set, too.

Very nice. I know that Dave Roos, who helps us with this, said that he had one of those electronic sets, too. Dave's pretty sharp, so I'm presuming he didn't hit it with the hammer. But this is a pretty fun one. We're going to talk about the history of chemistry sets, which, believe it or not, go back to the 18th century when they were called chemical chests. But this was pre-

let's make this a toy for kids. It was like, hey, if you're a university student or a professional or amateur young chemist, budding chemist. Do you like to wear capes? Yeah, exactly. You like a smock? Get a chemistry set. Right. So the first one, actually, they traced it back to a guy named, you're going to make me say his name, huh? Watch this. Yeah. Johan Friedrich August Gutling. Hey, not bad.

What do you mean not bad? That was dead on the nose. I think it was perfect. I think I can hear our German listeners giving me a standing ovation right now. Ah, wunderbar. He came up with a chemistry chest in, I think, 1789, if I didn't say that already. And it was called, get ready for this, a portable chest of chemistry or a complete collection of chemical tests for the use of chemists, physicians, mineralogists, metallurgists,

metallurgists, scientific artists, manufacturers, farmers, and cultivators of natural philosophy and party boys. And again, this thing wasn't a toy. It had 35 chemicals, had a very robust balance for weighing things, had a mortar and pestle, of course. It had a book, and this is kind of, as you'll see, a key with all chemistry sets is they come with a book of experiments.

Otherwise, you're just going to be dangerous. You might be anyway, but this one had about 150 experiments. And interestingly, it had this platinum foil included that they would not include now because this stuff was very valuable. I believe in today dollars, it'd be worth about $1,000. If the price is right.

That's right. And the reason they include platinum foil is platinum is a really valuable and useful catalyst in a lot of chemical reactions. It wasn't just to like show off. No, of course not.

So there were other early chemistry sets, too. Like you said, they were for grownups. They were for chemistry professionals. And people used to train to be chemistry professionals and go to college for it, still do. But there was a guy at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school all the way back in 1797 named James Woodhouse.

And he was a professor of chemistry. And he also had a nice little sideline selling chemistry chests to his students and being like, you really won't get an A or even maybe pass this class if you don't buy my chemistry set. Yeah, not bad. It's like when the professor wrote the book that you're in your textbook. Exactly.

One little just sort of fun fact that Dave threw in here was this was pre-test tube. They didn't have test tubes yet. So in both of these early 18th century chemistry chests, they said to use wine glasses. Very nice. Very swanky. So there was also, even back then, well, maybe not back in the 1700s, but certainly very quickly after that. Now, I'm going to go ahead and say the 1700s included. Sorry.

Everybody was like, this is not just like interesting and you can do stuff with it. This can be kind of fun too. Like it's fun to take two chemicals and suddenly make these two clear things turn blue. Who doesn't love that kind of thing? And so there was always like a certain element of magic to chemistry and in particular chemistry sets. And eventually people started like selling them as that, not just as that.

as that. But there was a transition from just for chemical professionals, chemists to for chemists, but also for chemists who'd like to have a good time. Yeah. I mean, there were and we've talked about this before, like scientific demonstrations in the 19th century could be everything from just like straight up science to a little little magic, a little showmanship involved, a little flair.

People like Faraday were doing stuff like this in public. There was a chemist named Frederick Ackham, I guess, A-C-C-U-M, who would do these big public demonstrations that were, you know, kind of part magic show, part science. And you could even buy one of his sets. He had a chemistry set. I don't think they were called chests at this point. It was. Oh, it was still called the chest? Oh, yeah. There it is in the title. Ackham's Chest of Chemical Amusement.

Again, which lends itself to amusement. I think the booklet was called Chemical Amusement, colon, a series of curious and instructive experiments in chemistry which are easily performed and unattended by danger. That's important right there. Yeah. Because one of the things that kind of got all over chemistry sites over the years was safety.

And this was even like back in the early 19th century that they were like, this can be dangerous. So, yeah, that was a big a big thing that he included that in the title of the booklet that came with it. Yeah, for sure. And all of this, you know, talk of sort of magic and fun is a is a long way to get to the fact that by the sort of early 1800s and like 1835, they started saying, hey,

These like we should sell these to kids. These are fun. You know who's trustworthy? Kids. Exactly. There's one called the Edie's Youth Laboratory from 1835. A few years later was Statham Students Chemical Laboratory. And then by 1856, they had one called Pike's Youth Chemical Cabinet.

Chemical cabinet sounds amazing. It does. And then by the time the 20th century rolled around, so they were making these things here or there for centuries by now. Finally, they were like, okay, our market is young people who are enthusiastic about chemistry.

But also, again, wear capes because they like magic. And one of the good examples that Dave turned up about this was it came out in 1900. It was Kingsley's Primus Chemical Magic and Practical Chemistry Cabinet.

And it had everything you needed to carry out like these serious chemistry experiments. And it came with a booklet, too, that had plenty of instructions. But it also had a lot of stuff to set things on fire and instructions on how to essentially make fireworks and things like that. Yeah, I would love to see a Venn diagram of Gen X kids who –

Had chemistry sets. Yeah. Who could pull a rabbit out of a hat or a card out of somebody's ear. Yeah. And like knew how to do the Rubik's Cube and draw a flip book. That's the trifecta. Yeah. That was my brother in a nutshell. Sure. It's like, oh, Rubik's Cube. Sure. You want to see how to solve it? But he wouldn't even say watch this. He'd be like, here, let me help you. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

I also, just as a little side note, I'm like, why do they call that a Primus chemistry cabinet? So it turns out Primus, one of the definitions of it is a small stove that burns paraffin. So presumably that was included in the kit as like a Bunsen burner. And it went a little deeper. I was like, okay, why is the band Primus called Primus?

And it turns out they were originally called the primates. There was another band called the primates that said, we will sue the pants off of you if you call yourself the primates. So Les Claypool and friends looked up primate definitions and words and found out that primus is the root word for primate. So they went with primus instead. Look at that. One of my most hated bands of all time. Really? Yeah.

Yeah, I hate Primus. And you know what? I'm going to hear from Primus fans. Oh, yeah, you are. Not yucking your yum. I love for you to love what you love, but I've got to be able to hate Primus as well. Sure. They can't yum your yuck like everybody. It's not like you're telling them not to listen or that they suck for listening. No, I'm sure they're great for certain ears. It's just not mine. They have some good songs, though, Chuck. Jerry was a race car driver. You honestly don't like that song.

No. Okay. All right. They all sound the same to me. They all sound like his bass just all sounds like. That was a really good impression, actually. And all the singing just sounds like. Yeah, that's definitely true, too. Yeah, you don't like Primus. No, it checks out. One of my very best friends loves Primus. And so, you know, we can we can all coexist. You're like, so I can say that. Yeah, exactly.

A lot of my friends are Primus fans. All right. Let's take a break and we'll enter the 20th century right after this. Sure. We learned so much stuff from Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. Chuck and Chuck.

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Okay, so I think, like I said, in the early 20th century, they were like, yep, young boys who are interested in chemistry. And let's go back and emphasize this. Boys, that's who we're going to market these things to. This is who chemistry sets belong to, like little boy scientists who have an interest in chemistry. And the thing that went basically throughout the 20th century, at least up until like the 60s, if you bought a chemistry set for your kid, like...

Like that was their first step toward being a professional chemist as they grew up. Yeah. And you were guaranteed –

to have a little boy on the front box. 100%. That's just the way it was back then. And we'll get to more of that sort of weird sexism and science that still continues today in a little bit. But one of the big players, there were a couple of big ones. The first one was the Kim Craft Company. Kim Craft chemistry set in 1916 was the first really sort of popular toy chemistry set produced by the Porter Chemical Company out of Maryland, California.

And it was about $1.50 to maybe $10 if you were pretty well-heeled because that's about $40 to $300 today. So some pretty decent money you'd have to throw down on the high-end chemistry set back then. These had test tubes by this point. You had an alcohol lamp. Of course, you had your weights and balances, and you had lots of chemicals.

Yeah, this is like a serious chemistry set. It had like all the stuff you needed and it was substantial in form, right? The manual also was like, we're going to do some serious stuff. One of the first experiments from this manual came from 1919, that edition. It's called Combination of Elements. And basically you put powdered zinc and sulfur on a metal spoon and start heating it.

Be sure to, quote, keep your face at a little distance. And then as the mass becomes hot, the sulfur takes fire and burns, and then the mixture starts to swell to a bulky, porous mass while on fire, and then suddenly there's a flash.

And sulfur and zinc unite chemically, forming zinc sulfide. And hopefully you have your eyebrows left afterwards. Yeah, it's funny. Like the literal quote was keeping your face at a little distance. And the first three times I read that, I read it as keeping your little face at a distance. Oh, I wish they'd said that. That's adorable. It was it should have been keep your little face at a great distance because that was dangerous. There was also something called fire ink.

which is exactly what you think is you would combine. Well, you may not know what you combine, but you know what the result probably is. You combine potassium nitrate and water in a test tube and then write on a piece of paper and light that on fire. And, you know, what you have spelled out is now on fire.

Yeah. So the potassium nitrate in water is the ink, the fire ink, as it were, which sounds pretty cool, man. Imagine being like, hello, how are you suddenly on fire on a piece of paper? Your friend's going to think you're pretty cool. I literally wrote neat with an exclamation point after that one. Yeah. But you would also probably be more likely to write butthole or something like that than, hey, how are you? Yeah.

That's true. You know, that's totally true. Also, I want to take back the word literally. I'm really trying hard to abandon that even when it's properly used. It's just so so wrong these days. Well, good for you. Thank you. Literally. Good for you. So what else? Well, there was another experiment. This is so fun. It's called making a fuse. And that basically all you need to know is like, you know, you can you can probably make things that will blow up. So you're going to need a fuse.

Yeah, and that went really well with the manufacturer of Colored Fire, which was Homemade Fireworks. It was genuinely and sincerely a flash in a pan because –

You would put these different metals in and make, you make gunpowder. The little kid would make gunpowder. And then depending on the chemical or metal that they added, it would burn a different color in a pan as a flash. Genuinely. Yeah. You found another, some cool research on like just how dangerous some of these chemicals were, right? Oh yeah. Let's talk about those. Yeah. What else was in there?

In some of these sets that came out in the 20th century, there was iodine solution, which sounds kind of innocuous, but they figured out over time that you could use that to make meth with. You could also, if you ate two grams of it or more, you would probably die.

Um, I think ammonium nitrate was in that, which is, uh, uh, frequently used to make bombs. Yeah. What else? Well, one thing you could do that was fun is you could make smoke bombs. Right. Uh, with that potassium nitrate, which is, uh, I don't know if you mentioned, it's also in gunpowder. True. So a lot of these experiments were like, watch it flame spark or boom in a, in a small way. Another one used to show up with sodium cyanide, which, uh,

is more commonly referred to as cyanide. And you would bind to metals, like make, essentially dissolve gold into water, metals into water. It's pretty neat. That's what it's used for. But it's also a rapidly acting toxin that can kill you dead pretty easily. And this was one of those chemicals in the glass vials that arrived in the chemistry sets for kids back then. Yeah. And speaking of glass or even some chemistry sets,

that had the material and instruction for blowing glass, which is

No doubt a super cool, awesome thing to learn, but it's, you know, it's not something a kid should be trying in their bedroom. No, I mean, it has to get really hot to melt glass enough to blow it. One of my favorites is calcium hypochlorite, which is one of the main ingredients for chlorine gas, which was, I think, the first chemical weapon to ever be banned by the world. So you could make a chemical weapon in your...

If you knew what you were doing. And as we're saying all this, we should point out that these early kits and sets did not offer things like eye protection, like not even a little pair of like fun goggles, you know, like, hey, kid, these are cute and fun. You look like a real scientist if you wear these like just didn't come with them. And the whole thing with, you know, that we tied it into earlier with magic, you

A lot of them have like here's your science experiments you can do, but also here's some just really fun sort of literal magic tricks you can do. Right. There is one that's called the magic handkerchief. And you take a handkerchief and you put, I think, blue cobalt on it. And as you dry it out, I think it turns white. No, blue.

And you can change it to white magically by instruction to ball it up and rub it in your hands for a few minutes. Any magic trick that takes a few minutes of repetitive motion is not a magic trick worth doing. But what was great is it said, now here's where you have some fun. And then it went on to the next instruction. So these were really mid-century written instruction booklets that really captured the time if you think about it.

Shall we take a break? Oh, my. You bet. All right. That was very insured, but we're doing it anyway. We'll be right back. We learned so much stuff from Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

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All right, so you're getting these chemistry sets. Another big part of the whole sort of branding thing for these companies making these. And this was just sort of big back in those days in like the 1950s was like clubs, like kids clubs. So if you got a chemistry set, it was a pretty good chance it would come with like a membership.

in like a science club. And there could be local chapters that you get together with your friends and things you could mail in for. Probably a magazine is involved, like a quarterly magazine. Certainly in the case of Chemcraft, they had the science club and the Chemcraft chemist was their rag that they sent out, which was usually just ads for more stuff to buy. But they were like kind of fun little

stories like where a kid would like save the day through some cool chemistry experiment. Yeah, they seem very Mark Trail-esque. Yeah, for sure.

So in addition to Chemcraft, Gilbert was essentially Chemcraft's rival. And Gilbert was the company of Alfred Carlton Gilbert, who had invented the original erector set in 1913. That originally was debuted as like an engineer's chemistry set. That's what erectors were sold as. But so Gilbert was like, well, let's get into chemistry, too. So they came up with the Gilbert chemistry outfit for boys.

So the name of the product literally specifies that it's just for boys.

Yeah, and it had a little asterisk, and at the very bottom it said, must have penis. On the label, too, like the picture on the box, had a little boy with his shirt sleeves rolled up wearing a tie doing his chemistry stuff. Like an eight-year-old wearing a tie. Yeah, this is 1920. Yeah. Yeah. So they found an instruction manual, not from the 1920 edition, but from 1936. Yeah.

And this one finally did have a warning here, and we should read this because it's pretty fun. Gilbert chemistry sets are not intended for children who cannot read and understand the accompanying instruction books. The sets do not contain dangerous poisons, and the chemicals mentioned in this manual are not embraced under the term poisons. They're perfectly safe to use if...

handled carefully and intelligently. They're not intended to be taken by mouth or swallowed, and no intelligent person would be expected to use them for such purposes. So they're shaming at the same time. It is necessary, however, to emphasize the fact that carelessness on the part of the experimenter can always lead to trouble. Yes. And if you ever signed up for Disney+, you can't sue us if you blow up and burn your house down.

Exactly. And then they have a few tips at the end, like, you know, never point the open end of a test tube that you're heating at anybody. Never just put your nose at the end of one while heating to smell it or put your face, your little face near it. Yeah, exactly. So at least Gilbert's, this is the 30s, mid 30s, where Gilbert's like, OK, we need to let kids know, like, you need to be responsible with this. Yeah.

And that was actually, I read one of the expectations of chemistry sets in the middle of the 20th century, that it went to a home populated by a boy who had parents that taught that kid chemistry.

responsible stuff, how to be responsible, how to handle chemicals correctly, how to be safe, how to be smart, that that was kind of part and parcel with buying a chemistry set. You, the parent, didn't just hand it to your kid and say, like, leave me alone for a while. Like you were supposed to be involved at least initially. At least looking over his shoulder.

With your pipe in your mouth. Yeah, knocking on the door and being like, still alive in there? Right. Mom, I told you to always knock. So we talked a little bit about the sort of sexism involved with all this stuff is only marketed to boys. Pictures of boys literally on the package for boys in some cases.

That was just the deal. It was like boys were scientists, girls were not considered for science. That is still a problem. There are so many initiatives these days to get young girls into science at a young age, very successfully in a lot of cases. But it's still a challenge to be a woman in the world of science.

I think we've heard from plenty of listeners who have verified that. But in the 1920s, they did, the Porter Chemical Company did say, hey, we're selling these things to boys. What about the girls? And they were like, oh, how about sachet craft? The girls' sachet outfit, which was chemistry in that it was a way to mix perfumes. Yeah, making flowery smells from aromatic powders.

Yeah, it was basically a perfume set. Right, exactly. And they're still in use today in who do love potions. And I was looking at some of these and the names of the ones that I could find were confusion. Destroy everything is one of the potions. Follow me, gal was another one. No, I'll have that. So you want to steer clear of people using who do love potions on you because there's no telling what they'll make you do is essentially the thinking behind it.

But they're made from sachet powders as well. That's why I say that. I don't know if that was clear. Eventually in the 1960s, Gilbert finally was like, all right, let's make a four girls chemistry set. But even then...

In the books and stuff, it was like so you too can become a lab technician. A lab technician. Yeah, like not, you know, they weren't encouraging you to like reach for the stars and become a scientist. No, it was like so you could learn what you're doing and go assist boy chemists, the real kind. Right.

Exactly. It's so nuts. Boo. Um, so this was, uh, in the sixties, you said that at least chemistry sets for girls came out, even if they were still derogatory. Um,

That was the golden era of chemistry sets, the 50s to the 60s, usually about the early to mid 60s, they say. We love a golden age. Yeah. And this was definitely it. And I've seen in multiple places that the reason why this was the golden age of chemistry sets was because this was a time when America in particular was feeling pretty good about science.

Not only had America been the first to come up with the bomb, we were also making things like nylon. We were making more durable goods out of plastics. Like science was...

improving people's lives. And at the heart of this was chemistry. So there was a real desire to keep the party going by creating the next generation of chemists by really going all in on the chemistry sets. And so they started selling even better than they ever had before.

Yeah, the two slogans changed in the 50s and 60s for Kim Kraft. They changed it to Porter Science Prepares Young America for World Leadership. And Gilbert responded in kind with Today's Adventures in Science Will Create Tomorrow's America. And it was this idea, like I think even A.C. Gilbert, the founder, like included a note that.

that said, "Hello, boys." It said, "Hello, boys." -Mm-hmm. -"The need for chemists is greater now than at any point in our country's history. This Gilbert Chemistry set may well be the means of launching you

on a useful and well-paying career. So it was like, hey, this is a toy, but if you're interested in science, just wait because there's a career out there waiting for you. Yeah. If you like making things catch on fire, wait until they pay you money to make things catch on fire. You're going to really like it. And so things just kind of started to get like,

Like anything they could throw at the wall because they were selling so many of these, they were willing to try a lot more than just the standard chemistry set. And one of the ones that came out, Chuck, in I think 1950 is widely considered, at least by some, the world's most dangerous toy. Was it Bag of Glass? It was even worse than that. Although, I don't know, at the end of the day, I think Bag of Glass might be worse.

That, of course, was from the great Saturday Night Live from the 70s, I think, Dan Aykroyd. But we did, or maybe you did, back in the day when we were tasked with doing, what do we call them, image galleries? And you did something on dangerous toys. And I think this was in there. It had to be. We talked about it either there or in maybe a podcast or one of the videos we used to do about the Atomic Energy Lab. It had real uranium in it.

It did. Not only did it have four vials of actual uranium ore, super radioactive uranium ore. Well, I should say actual radioactive uranium ore. There are also three different sources of alpha, beta, and gamma particle radiation too. So this box was like quite radioactive. It was a legit real deal science box. It had a Geiger counter in it.

Thank God. It had something called a spintheroscope, which you could look through. It's almost like a seeing eyeglass. No. What are they called? Like that? Like a loop. A captain would like pull out the not a telescope. Like a sextant. No, it's like that telescope that's small and pocket size that telescopes into a smaller version of itself.

I think it's called a telescope, isn't it? Whatever. So it's like that. But you can actually watch radioactive isotopes decaying under this thing. There was also a cloud chamber in there, which is really impressive that they had cloud chambers. Yeah. Is this the thing you sent? Yes. I did not get a chance to look over this, so feel free. Okay. So a cloud chamber is a specific kind of –

like flask or vial that's set up to hold alcohol vapor that in some way, shape or form, I guess through magic, um,

you can see the trails of radioactive particles moving through the alcohol vapor, very similar to like a contrail from an airplane, if you believe that those are actually contrails. And the particles, the lower, lesser active radioactive particles would kind of zigzag and make little,

cute lines, but that's because they were actually being slowed down by the alcohol vapor. The really strong ones would make a nice, bold, straight line through there. And you could just see all these little trails of radioactive particles show up in your own personal cloud chamber that came in this playset. I know, it was really impressive.

Well, the ones that came with uranium, they had, you know, booklets. One was called prospecting for uranium that taught you how to mine a radioactive ore. So you're thinking like, all right, like how literally how dangerous was this?

There have been modern calculations about, you know, what was contained in these boxes. And supposedly the amount of radiation from the uranium in one of these sets equaled about a day of UV exposure from the sun. So it's not the most dangerous thing in the world, but it is pretty funny that it came with like actual uranium. Right.

I couldn't find an answer, though. Like, over what period of time was it a day's worth of UV exposure? Like, an hour? If you spent the day with this thing? Like, I couldn't quite nail it down, but from the context that everybody describes it in, it sounds fairly harmless. Yeah, and it's exposure, but, like, what if it's on your skin or gets in your body somehow? Your teeth?

It can't be good. So I saw that they only sold about 5,000 of them and that it wasn't. There's a great Atlas Obscura video on this where they talk to a curator at a science museum who opens one of these and just talks about it. And she said that they were discontinued after two years, not because of safety concerns, but because they didn't sell very many because it was about 500 or something dollars in today's money for these things. So most parents weren't like, sure, I'll buy you this.

you know, atomic lab for 500 bucks. Yeah. And here's the thing. It was just kind of fun. We won't read through all these quotes, but a lot of, you know, legit Nobel winning chemistry chemists over the years got their start in chemistry sets. I imagine a lot of real deal scientists and chemists had these things when they were kids. And we'll read one from Oliver Sacks. The neurologist and author said, I do not think there can be any adequate substitute for

for having a chemistry set or a little chemistry lab and doing experiments oneself, thinking them out, taking responsibility for them and occasionally facing risks too. So Oliver Sacks talking about risk was one of the big sort of cells of chemistry sets for kids, like a little bit of danger involved,

You know they were fun and all but I think it was that little bit of like you know you are making fire you are making things go boom or smoke that was one of the things that appealed to kids and probably still does.

Yeah, for sure. And the problem is, is that over time, so like kids who are like, I'm really into this and I need to learn to be a responsible chemist because I want to grow up to be a chemist. Over, like there were also kids that got these that were not that interested in being a chemist. They just wanted to blow things up.

And then I think also there were kids who were responsible but just had accidents. And so there were reports of people burning down their family house with these chemistry sets or injuring themselves. And that kind of coincided with a couple of things. One, this increasing interest in protecting kids from toys.

And then two, also a greater emphasis on things like environmental pollutants and toxins. And that whole like love of chemistry that really carried everybody in the 50s and early 60s was starting to be questioned. And like exactly what are these chemicals doing to us? So you put those two things combined and chemistry started to take a hit.

Yeah, for sure. In 66, Congress passed the Child Protection Act, which, you know, all of a sudden you could ban a toy that had something dangerous or hazardous in there. A couple of years later, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, they estimated that toys, just all toys, caused about 700,000 deaths.

a year. So more regulations were passed in the late 60s and early 70s for, like you said, just protecting kids from dangers in toys and what these toys were made of in the case of chemistry sets, like the chemicals that were in there. Yeah. So like this increasing concern among parents and what are in these chemistry sets led to a decline in sales. And in fact, the

Porter Chemical and Gilbert, the two rivals who made Chemcraft and Gilbert chemistry sets, were bought by a toy maker named Gabriel Toys. You might recognize that name from Othello, Trouble, the pottery craft activity little set where you could make your own pottery. You remember that? It was this little pottery wheel. I probably remember the box. You definitely would. But you could recreate that scene from Ghost, but for cheap. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. As a teenager, too. Anyway, Gabriel, they bought those two in 1967. And by the 80s, they were like, no chemistry sets. You just couldn't sell them. Some companies went on like, no, we're going to keep the flame going. But they really, really watered them down starting in the 80s and 90s.

Yeah, for sure. And that I mean, I guess my brother would have had one probably from the 70s. So it may have still been a little bit legit. But yeah, in the 80s, they started literally watering them down, watering down the chemicals.

Things, you know, became plastic. Like, you didn't get glass test tubes and metal scales and stuff like that anymore. Like, you know, the old kits were just sort of smaller, condensed versions of, like, the real deal. And that all changed. They just became cheaper, kind of like everything else. I think in 2001 there was a recall of a set called Professor Wacko's Exothermic Exuberance. Mm-hmm.

That had glycerin and potassium. What is that word? Permanganate. Okay, great. And that could cause things to catch on fire and spontaneously combust. This particular kit had containers with removable lids, but they weren't labeled. So kids were mislabeling things or just getting them confused, basically, because there were no labels. And there were two separate house fire incidents. So that one was recalled. And that was...

I mean, that was in the early 2000s. It was surprising those were still around. Yeah. I think those people try to throw back to like the real deal and it just didn't quite work.

There was another one that's a CSI fingerprint examination kit, which sounds extremely innocuous, but it was recalled in 2007 because they found out that the fingerprint powder that you use to dust for prints with had asbestos in it. It was up to 5% asbestos, which is obviously, I think, a mesothelioma-causing carcinogen. So that was like, no. Yeah.

And parents were like, what are you guys doing? Stop selling our kids. Like, we're clearly into product safety. Stop selling our kids this stuff. So a toy maker named, oh, I don't know who made it, but they came out with a set called Chemistry 60. And they were like, watch this. This is 60 fun activities with no chemicals. In other words, boring.

This is the irony here. Despite that it had no chemicals, it had two kinds of safety goggles, the goggles and those little clear safety glasses made out of whatever they're made out of, the non-shat or something. And a folded up nanny who came out of the box to hover while all these experiments are going on. And you could get the items that you need. Like you did need some chemicals, but these are like kitchen items.

level chemicals like vinegar, baking soda, that kind of stuff. And I thought that was kind of reminiscent. You remember Dave came up with a bunch of quotes of Nobel scientists who credit chemistry sets for like increasing their or starting their interest in science. There's one other scientist named Cary Mullis who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 93 who said that their objective with their chemistry set was to figure out what things I might put together to cause an explosion.

and that they discovered whatever chemicals might be missing, they could buy them at the local drugstore or hardware store.

And so like that's this is like the antithesis of that rather than being like I need more explosive stuff or I need this other thing to make this explosion happen. I'm going to go down to the drugstore hardware store. This was I'm going to go to the kitchen and make a baking soda and vinegar volcano in this chemistry set that my parents bought me. And then I'm going to go to sleep and maybe hopefully never wake up. Right.

Dave did a little research, though, and found that there are some pretty good ones today that you can still get. There are some companies that are, you know, trying to make a safe version of a real deal chemistry set these days. This one called, I don't know, it's Tim's or Thames in this case. And Cosmos with a K. It's called the Chem C3000. Wow. 280 bucks plus money for chemicals. So it better be good for that kind of dough.

Yeah, it got best overall chemistry set by the Wall Street Journal in 2006. I didn't know the Wall Street Journal rated such things. But it makes sense. Yeah, 18 years ago. It does make sense that they would rate it, though, because some of the legit chemistry sets sold today, they're for, like, homeschoolers, like, who need this kind of stuff. And, in fact, if you want to plunk down 645 simoleons, you can get a chemistry set that covers an entire year of 11th grade chemistry.

Oh, wow. Pretty neat. I also saw one other reason that chemistry sets kind of got watered down over the years are meth labs. People were finding like they could actually buy these things and use them to make meth. Right. So there was another there was another prong to like be like, we need to really stop making these legit chemistry sets. Got anything else?

I got nothing else. You know, support science for your kids. Little girls, little boys, give them a chemistry set. Very nice. That's what I say. That's right. Since Chuck gave us a nice PSA, it's time, of course, for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this all caught up. Hey, everybody. Got hooked on your show in 2019. After a few weeks of listening, I decided I had to listen to all of it. And after five years, I finally have completed that task.

Just finished listening to the Judas Priest suicide trial during a morning trail run and now I feel like I have a little void in my life, you guys. Having to wait patiently throughout the week for new content. I often listen for hours on end during trail runs, training for ultra marathons. By the way, Josh has many times called them ultrathons, which never fails to give me a chuckle.

Ultrathons? Is that another thing? I think they're called ultramarathons. Ultrathon is like a bad guy on... In a character. Yeah, on some Japanese anime. Yeah, I like Ultrathon. Your voices and content, guys, always give me... Keep me in a positive mood, even when I'm at the point of exhaustion. You've been with me and my wife through some big life events, our marriage, multiple cross-country moves, new jobs, and now a new baby in a few weeks. Oh, nice.

And by the time this comes out, that baby will be around, I would imagine, because we're ahead by a few weeks at this point. So keep up the great work, guys. I can continue to share this and enjoy it with my family as it grows by one. Maybe a long shot, but I'd love to see a live show up here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that you get a couple of hundred people in a room here.

That's for Matt. Well, Matt, we got a couple of hundred people in a room in Atlanta. Yeah, we can't get worse than that, right? Yeah, I'd rather go to Halifax than have a hometown show be undersold. Yeah. You got any barns in Halifax, Matt, that we can do a show in? I bet Matt has a barn. Well, congratulations in advance retroactively to you and your family for your baby's birth.

And if you want to get in touch with us like Matt did and tell us how much we've kept you going on your ultrathons, you can do so by sending us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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