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12/5/14

Christmas: The Toys That Send Kids to the Emergency Room - by Brian Resnick

The Razor was the first hit toy of the new millennium. In 2000, Razor sold 5 million scooters in just six months, and they were everywhere. On long-shadowed schoolyard evenings, all the cool kids would take turns on the scooters, testing out tricks and making skid marks on the pavement. Land a hella tight ollie, and you were a playground hero.

Here's a statistic to pop that nostalgia bubble: Razor scooters and other "ride-on" toys sent 110,000 kids to the hospital in 2001, according to a new report in the journal Clinical Pediatrics. In 1999, that number was 25,000—a jump as extreme as any trick you could land on a Razor.

According to the paper—a comprehensive crunch of 20 years of hospital data—149,000 kids go to the hospital every year for toy-related injuries. "On average in 2011," the paper states, "a child received treatment in a U.S. ED [Emergency Department] for a toy-related injury every three minutes."

By far, the most dangerous toy category in the analysis were ride-on toys like scooters, wagons, and electric-powered mini-cars (e.g., one of these bad boys you always coveted).

The Toys That Send Kids to the Emergency Room - The Atlantic

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