Sky Dancers
Galoob's pull-string flying fairy dolls: yank the cord and the foam-winged doll spun into the air and across the room — often straight into someone's face. Recalled by the millions in 2000.
Sky Dancers were Galoob's flying fairy dolls, launched for the 1994 holiday season. Each doll sat in a pull-string base; yank the cord and its foam wings spun like a helicopter rotor, launching it several feet into the air and across the room. A 1996 animated series and a line of books soon followed.
The problem was where they landed. The hard-plastic dolls flew fast and unpredictably, and Galoob logged around 170 reports of them striking children and adults — roughly 150 injuries, including scratched corneas, temporary blindness, broken teeth, a mild concussion, and facial cuts that needed stitches.
In June 2000, Galoob and the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled about 8.9 million Sky Dancers; the company was later fined $400,000 for being slow to report the danger. A redesigned version returned in 2005, but the original is fondly (and warily) remembered as the toy that literally fought back.
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