Original subtitles

[sign buzzing] [gentle music]

- Did you know that there was a time

when just getting into bed could land you in hot water?

- A waterbed weighs nearly one ton.

That's like having a small car in your bedroom.

- You could puncture it

and all of a sudden now you've got a flood.

It's all the dangers of water delivered in your mattress.

- Or when your garden hose hid a dirty little secret.

- I thought it was the copper end of the hose,

the taste of the copper coming in my mouth.

As it turns out, it was the taste of poison.

- Do you remember the decade

when buying a new car could really blow up in your face?

- It should have just been a fender bender, but on contact.

- There seems to be something about the culture of the '70s

where people were a little fast and loose

with their own health.

- These are the things we used to do.

For fun, for money, or maybe out of boredom,

that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous? Certainly.

Deadly? Occasionally.

But boy, wasn't it exciting.

[dramatic music]

[mysterious music]

- [Henry] If you were a kid in the 1970s,

your bicycle was a ticket to it all.

Transportation, liberation,

and on occasion, hospitalization.

- By the time the bicycles became big

its turn in the 19th century

all the way to just about the 1960s,

it was just about transportation

to get you from point A to point B.

Maybe you used them on your paper route.

But then in 1965, a dude comes along and changes everything.

- [Rutledge] Evel Knievel is the greatest daredevil

to ever live.

- In the '60s and '70s,

I mean, he was like a God walking amongst us.

- Evel Knievel.

- He's on magazines and lunchboxes

and even has a toy version of himself

that can jump over things.

- [Henry] But playing with an action figure isn't enough.

Kids want in on the action themselves.

- [Adam] Suddenly kids want bikes that look more badass

with chopper handlebars and really sick forks and frames.

Bicycle, motorcycle, who cares? I'm Evel Knievel, baby.

- My generation is the one

that graduated from those old school bikes,

belonged to my sisters, to mine, which I wanted

that had the high handle bar, banana seat,

gold and glittered.

- You can sort of lean back into your banana seat

so you can like really sit there, like really feel like,

you know, you're on a motorcycle,

basically, you're that cool.

Put some sunglasses on you and you're ready to rock.

- [Rutledge] Now the cool thing about these bikes

is they're really meant to have fun,

so, a lot of kids are really trying to learn

how to pop them up and do wheelies.

Some of them had a little wheelie bar in the back.

- You pulled wheelies with this thing.

You rolled down the street on one wheel.

You could skid out. You could do jumps.

You could do all the stuff

you were watching Evel Knievel do.

- [Jason] This 1968 model, the Stingray, this thing

was amazing.

A smaller front wheel for maneuverability,

a five-speed gear shift right on the frame,

and front and rear suspension,

which just made it perfect for jumping things.

- [Adam] Kids wanted to jump something that would

draw a crowd.

Okay, they don't have a line of school buses

like Evel Knievel,

but you might have a friend or two

that might be willing to lay down.

- Kids being kids,

they're bringing stuff out of the garage.

They're getting boards. They're getting ramps.

- [Jason] You didn't have a helmet,

you know knee pads or shoulder pads.

You're jumping on your little stunt bike

without anything at all.

It's just kids versus the pavement.

- [Nicole] Parents are fully behind

their children copying Evel Knievel

who broke bones and fractured himself and,

you know, just all of this various injuries.

And they're like, yeah,

that sounds like something we want our kids to be doing.

What do you need out of the garage to help you do that?

- [Henry] Just how supportive our parents?

Enough to call the local news.

In 1976,

one Indiana station makes a kid's death-defying leap

their featured programming.

- [Reporter] 13-year-old Terry "Evel Knievel" Bollinger,

who set aside today to prove to all

he could jump over 10 trash cans.

- [Henry] The report builds up every detail.

A rickety plywood ramp and 10 very beat up trash cans.

- He's nervous but confident, right?

This is going to be the coolest moment of his life.

- The big moment comes. He is huffing, he's puffing.

He takes off.

Once Terry falls, there's not like an adult

who rushes in and is like, hey, are you okay, buddy?

They're all just kind of like, huh.

Well, I guess he didn't make it. Hmm.

What's for dinner?

- [Jason] Terry has no helmet, no protection.

If someone did something like this today,

there would be a lot of people being sued.

- [Reporter] You hurt yourself, did you?

- No. - [Reporter] What happened?

- Maybe my arm.

- [Reporter] What happened?

- Couldn't get going fast enough.

- What I love is the reporter seems more concerned

about Terry's safety than Terry's parents,

and she's already planning a follow-up story.

- [Reporter] When you going to try it again?

- Next Monday. - [Reporter] Next Monday.

- That's good journalism.

- [Don] Throughout the 1970s,

it was something like 60,000 kids a year

would end up in the ER

due to injuries from failed bike stunts.

Concussions, broken bones, lacerated livers.

- [Henry] But by the end of the '70s,

the inspiration for so many young daredevils

is losing his mojo.

- [Kavitha] You start to see the decline of Evel Knievel's

popularity.

For one, the novelty of it has kind of worn off,

but also he's older.

And throughout his career,

Evel Knievel has sustained over 400 bone injuries.

- And then in 1980, Evel Knievel, the all time great,

retires.

- [Rutledge] The whole extreme jumping fad fades pretty

quickly, and partly because,

suddenly, safety was more important to parents,

and then they started actually parenting,

paying attention to their kids.

- Those bikes weren't designed for stunts,

but in the 1970s,

you didn't have to misuse a toy to get hurt.

Sometimes using it exactly as it was intended was enough.

- [Kavitha] In 1977, "Star Wars" mania hit the country.

It's the biggest thing around.

It's the highest grossing film to date.

- Every single company on earth

is out there with their clones,

trying to harness that "Star Wars" magic.

- [Adam] "Battlestar Galactica" premieres on ABC in 1978,

and much like "Star Wars" with the series, come the toys.

- [Austin] The line is so popular.

It sells two million toys spacecraft

in the 1978 Christmas season.

- [Henry] Turns out, "Battlestar Galactica"

has a secret weapon to thank for their huge Christmas sales.

- [Kid] Cylon Raider missile base, open.

Cylon Raider launch.

- [Adam] Four of the ships from the "Battlestar Galactica" range

can launch projectiles at each other.

No other space toy, not from "Buck Rogers,"

not from "Star Wars" can do that.

- [Jason] When you're a kid playing at interstellar warfare,

there's nothing more frustrating

than firing a missile at your friend ship,

saying, oh, I got you.

And he's saying, no, you didn't.

But with real projectiles, instead of just flashing lights,

there's no questioning.

You fire, you hit, you know.

- [Henry] But these fake space battles

turn out to be real life dangerous.

- [Austin] Compared to back then, today's modern projectile

toys are neutered.

Either the darts are soft or they don't go too far,

or the firing mechanisms are weak,

or more than likely, all three.

- But the "Battlestar Galactica" line

shoots these hard plastic missiles

with the force of a low-powered BB gun.

- [Austin] It shoots them far and fast and straight,

which sounds awesome because it was,

but the force with the small size of the missiles,

that's a big problem.

- They're really small.

They're only about an inch, an inch and a half.

It's a choking hazard.

But at the time, choking hazards,

we're not really thinking about it.

We're just buying toys for our kids that are fun.

- [Don] And to make matters worse,

where you load the missile and where you fire it

are actually very close together,

especially on the Colonial Viper.

So, it was very easy to slip

and accidentally fire that missile

right down your own throat, lodge there,

and it was very hard to get it out.

- There are so many stories

of parents running to the emergency room.

One kid had a half hour surgery to get this out.

- [Henry] Despite these incidents,

the Consumer Product Safety Commission

doesn't order the toys recalled.

- That is what responsible looks like in the 1970s.

However, the company knows they have a problem,

so they voluntarily put labels on the toys saying,

don't fire at your face or mouth.

But, they don't put the labels

on the ones in the stores.

They just put them on the ones in the factories

that are about to be shipped.

- [Rutledge] Sales are still going strong through the

holiday season.

And then a couple days after Christmas,

a kid actually chokes on a missile from a Cylon Raider.

And that's kind of it.

- [Austin] The fun is over.

They recall existing "Battlestar Galactica" spaceships

and redesign new ones with non-firing missiles.

It's such a big deal.

They actually highlight it in the commercials.

- [Voiceover] Redesign toys do not launch missiles.

- [Hakeem] Sales drop like crazy.

Their biggest selling point

has become their greatest liability.

They've become more safe, but as far as kids are concerned,

they are a lot less cool.

- [Adam] It is the "Battlestar Galactica" toy line

that is responsible

for toys that come with small plastic pieces

bearing the warning of choking hazards.

- [Jason] Unsurprisingly, those dangerous

OG "Battlestar Galactica" missile firing ships,

they are now considered rare and valuable collectibles.

- So there you go.

Those toys actually ended up making us safer.

Chalk one up for the '70s.

- If you thought New York was dangerous during the '70s,

the Big Apple had nothing on a popular tourist spot

across the river in the wilds of New Jersey.

- [Kavitha] Action Park will always be remembered

as the most thrilling and dangerous

and bonkers kids park in the tri-state area.

Nothing compares to it.

- I can't wait to jump into Tarzan pool.

- [Austin] I would've loved to go on all of the Action Park

rides that are so notorious and dangerous.

Like I want to get bounced around

in a misengineered loopty loop.

I want to lose my teeth on a rope swing.

Action Park commercials were the coolest thing on earth.

- [Don] I grew up in Jersey and I remember the radio ads.

Come to Action Park. It sounded like a crazy thing to do.

Like you could risk your life down a mountain

and you wanted to go.

It sounded like the ultimate adventure.

- [Henry] How did Action Park become known

as the place for death-defying rides?

It all began with the very first attraction

when there was no park, just a struggling ski slope.

- It's 1976 and businessman Gene Mulvihill is in a bind.

He used to work on Wall Street,

but he got chased out by the SEC for breaking so many rules.

Now, he is the owner of a big risky investment

called the Vernon Valley Great Gorge Ski Resort

in New Jersey.

And he's bleeding money.

He can't use the ski resort in the summer months

because there's no snow,

but he comes up with a plan to use his land all year round.

- He comes up with a bobsled type run,

a 2,700-foot twisting chute

made of the cheapest concrete you could find.

- [Don] The bobsled would be a simple plastic seat on rollers.

A stick between your legs would be there to apply brakes

if you went too fast.

Maybe.

- [Henry] It's called an alpine slide.

A ride that's becoming popular

at ski areas around the world.

But this one is going to be unlike any other.

- [Austin] Typical alpine slides have a more gradual slope.

Mulvihill is going to plummet almost 1,000 vertical feet

in less than one minute.

- [Hakeem] You fly down the mountain in your own little

vehicle, whipping around turns, winding, twisting.

It is pure exhilaration.

- [Henry] The ride is so popular.

Mulvihill builds Action Park around it,

attracting over a million visitors every year.

- My kids love the ride.

- [Henry] But the alpine slide

remains its most popular attraction

and its most perilous.

- I grew up around Action Park.

I had a t-shirt that had the alpine slide on it.

However, I never actually went on the Alpine Slide

because it was famous for people getting hurt on it.

- [Hakeem] There are so many problems starting with

the handbrake.

First off, it's just a wooden stick.

And they're so poorly maintained,

it doesn't always work.

- There's also the issue that the walls of the chute

are only about a foot high.

So if anything happens,

you go completely flying off of this apparatus

at 40 miles an hour.

- [Brian] People would get hurt. It would flip.

People would get thrown out of it. I saw all this firsthand.

- [Hakeem] Instead of the thrill of skiing without snow,

the alpine slide becomes the thrill of surgery

without anesthesia.

- It looks cool and super fun, but injuries keep piling up.

- There's a 19-year-old employee of the facility

who gets onto one of the sleds with a faulty brake.

It fails. He goes flying.

His head hits a rock and he falls into a coma.

- [Don] The family sues Action Park and wins,

but somehow the place keeps operating for another 16 years.

- [Henry] The place is earning its nicknames

like accident park, traction park, and class action park.

But nothing seems to be enough to earn it a shut down.

- [Kavitha] Finally, by the mid 90s,

Mulvihill has encountered all of these lawsuits

and he's in debt,

so, he's finally forced to shut down Action Park.

And then it's converted to a real water park

with actual safety features and guidelines.

- If the Alpine slide wasn't terrifying enough,

you could always take a ride

in one of the most notorious cars in history.

- [Jason] By the late '60s, American car manufacturers,

they're really starting to worry.

Gas prices are going up.

They're losing a generation of consumers

to these smaller foreign cars.

But Ford, all they're offering right now,

are these heavy muscle cars,

and so they come up with a solution.

- [Don] In 1970, after two years of R&D,

when it normally takes twice as much time

to develop a new car,

Ford rolls out a new model

unlike anything they've ever made before.

- [Voiceover] Pinto, the new world carefree car from Ford.

- [Jason] The Pinto is here to save Ford from the invasive

VW bug.

It's marketed as a low cost, low fuel, American-made car.

Everything about the Pinto

is designed to be easy on the wallet.

- [Nicole] Ford does a crazy amount of promoting for the

Pinto, they've got it in TV ads.

Henry Ford II

is driving it around everywhere through Detroit.

Really, really building a brand.

- [Jason] This thing also is only half the weight

of their normal cars,

which means it's going to get better gas mileage.

It's also very affordable.

It's $2,000 brand new,

which is about $16,000 in today's money.

- [Henry] The affordable, fuel-efficient Pinto

is the perfect car for the early '70s,

and 800,000 are sold in the first two years.

- [Don] In 1973, due to the oil crisis,

gas prices in America quadruple overnight,

and as a result, sales of Pintos skyrocket.

- [Henry] But the plucky Pinto also has a hot little secret.

- Lily Gray is driving her Pinto in May of 1972,

and it kind of stalls out.

So she's trying to get out of the way and is rear-ended,

and her car burst into flames.

- It should have just been a fender bender, but on contact.

Boom.

- This is actually the first of many incidents

involving Pintos getting hit from behind

in low speed impacts

and bursting into flame like blowtorches.

So people are thinking, what's going on?

Something's not right here.

- [Negin] It turns out

because they wanted to make the car small and light,

during the design phase,

the rear of the Pinto shrunk to far more than what's normal.

Shrinking any part of a car should be really done with care.

- [Brian] The problem is the gas tank

was right next to the back bumper

with almost no protection.

- [Jason] So, even in a fender bender,

sharp metal points rip the gas tank open like a can opener.

Fuel spills everywhere.

One spark, and it's like the 4th of July.

- [Henry] By the late 1970s,

over a hundred lawsuits are filed

by victims of fiery Pinto crashes.

- [Negin] News story after news story

about these explosions come out,

and it becomes a national punchline.

It's in late night. It's in cartoons.

- It was kind of one of the first examples

that I remember of a nationwide joke.

But, for something to gain

that level of notoriety and failure, it had to really suck.

It became the standard bearer for what a flop was.

- [Jason] In 1978, 1.5 million Pintos are actually recalled.

Crazy thing is like 1979, 1980,

they still sell almost 200,000 Pintos,

which goes to show you people are willing to

maybe compromise on safety if they can save a buck.

- Once the '70s went away, so did the Pinto.

It was discontinued in 1980.

- Nothing embodies the free-wheeling 1970s,

more than pairing a huge crowd with extremely cheap beer.

Surely, that wouldn't lead to any trouble.

- [Nicole] In 1974, it's a hard time for baseball.

One of the top teams, the Milwaukee Brewers,

is getting less than 12,000 fans in the stands.

- [Jason] The Oakland A's,

they're the reigning world series champions.

They got Reggie Jackson on their team,

and they can't sell 10,000 tickets.

If the very best teams can't fill their stadiums,

then a team that's not even doing very well at all,

like the Cleveland Indians,

they're going to have a lot of leftover hotdogs

at the end of a game.

- [Henry] Hoping to draw a crowd, Cleveland's front office

comes up with an innovative marketing ploy to boost revenue.

- 10 cent beer night.

- [Nicole] Offer people cheap beer, get people in the stands,

and they feel like it's going to be a home run.

To their surprise, 25,000 fans show up for this promotion.

- And they start drinking 65,000 cups of Stroh's beer.

- The trouble is evident as early as the second inning.

When a woman jumps onto the field, runs out,

lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts to the crowd,

and then tries to kiss the home plate umpire.

Soon after that, a young man starts peeling off his clothes

and streaks completely across the outfield.

- [Henry] Streakers on the field? That's bad enough.

But, the home team is behind.

And in the stands, the crowd is going wild.

- The beer vendors, they're so overwhelmed,

they abandon their posts altogether.

The kegs are now unattended,

so people are able to just pour as much beer as they want.

- [Nicole] Can you imagine to date you have security guards,

you have people IDing for drinks.

Back then, people were ransacking the place.

- [Henry] At the end of the ninth inning

with the beer flowing freely and the score tied up,

the Indians are on the verge of a comeback win.

And the event turns into absolute pandemonium.

- The crowd gets rowdier and rowdier.

They start throwing beer bottles.

They start throwing trash onto the field, batteries.

- [Jason] They start throwing firecrackers

into the opposing team's bullpen, the Texas Rangers.

And they start yelling back up into the stands.

The fans start yelling back down to them.

People start storming the field by the hundreds.

People are starting fights with the players.

Everybody's out of control.

- [Henry] 50 stadium officers

and two off-duty Cleveland policemen

are completely overwhelmed by the mob of drunk fans

and have to call for assistance.

- It was just so unsafe.

Eventually, the players were like,

well, we got to defend ourselves.

- [Jason] Billy Martin, the manager of the Texas rangers,

he tells his players to grab bats

and go start walloping these drunk fans.

- [Edward] When I saw a ten cent beer night on the news,

it looked more like what I imagined

the Roman Coliseum was like

than a placid day at the park with the family.

- [Henry] With only one out to go and the score still tied,

Umpire Nestor Chylak finally has enough of the chaos

and calls the game a forfeit.

- I just think it was a,

just a bunch of kids who just couldn't handle their liquor.

And those aren't the real good baseball fans in Cleveland.

- [Brian] 10 cent beer night is a perfect example

of how we're our own worst enemy.

We took our shirts off. We ran on the field.

We started a riot.

We can't be trusted with 10 cent beers.

- It wasn't just sports crowds that were wilder in the '70s.

Any big event could get out of hand

when people showed up not quite dressed for the occasion.

- [Kavitha] In 1973, the full counterculture is in effect.

This is a generation

that is sick of the rigid rules of their parents

and especially of the boomer and World War II generation.

- [Negin] The motto was let it all hang out.

And that's when a group of college kids was just like,

oh, let's literally have it all hang out.

- The way they do this, especially on college campus,

is to strip down naked and run around the grounds,

and they call this streaking.

- Streaking, it's fun because it's transgressive, you know?

And, but it's also harmless in a way.

But, it does feel dangerous and it does feel freeing.

- It's not really clear

where the origins of streaking on campus are.

By 1974, kids are streaking across campuses

all over the country.

- [Brian] These fraternities and sororities

that are letting people know

that they're going to streak the quad.

Word gets out and people start coming to the quad

to watch the show.

- [Henry] What starts is a naked fraternity prank

becomes a movement, and soon people gather by the thousands

to watch people get their streak on.

- [Lance] Things just get out of hand.

In North Carolina, 4,000 people show up.

At SMU, more people show up to watch the streakers

than the basketball game.

- In the 1970s, streaking has kind of gone mainstream.

You have things like Time Magazine

calling it the epidermis epidemic.

- That spring, a streaker runs by at the Academy Awards.

Actor David Niven is on stage.

- Quite likely.

Probably the only love that man will ever get in his life

is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings.

- [Henry] But the carefree days don't last.

And believe it or not,

it's not the nakedness that ends the party,

it's crowd control.

- 4,000 people turn out at the University of Delaware

as spectators to a streaking event,

and that just turned into mayhem.

- [Lance] It ends with injured police, damaged police cars,

and a dozen arrests.

- [Negin] Things get so bad that the police start showing up

with riot gear at these streaking events.

- Streaking eventually dies down by the end of 1974

because of this mix of police crackdowns

and universities trying to stop it.

And just the thrill of it kind of wanes.

- Today, streaking is a thing of the past.

But those naked images, they're forever.

- Hearing that people were injecting something unusual

in the 1970s probably won't shock you.

But, hearing what it was just might.

- Back in the 1970s, if you had allergies,

you would be treated with an antihistamine,

but they caused drowsiness.

The type of drowsiness that would put you out of action.

- [Rutledge] So, people start looking for alternatives,

but what they find isn't sold in drugstores.

It's urine.

Dr. George R. Burrell

runs the allergy control medical clinics.

They're based in Southern California

and they're working on something called autoimmune therapy.

- Don't worry, patients are not drinking the urine.

Dr. Burrell has a better idea.

- [Martin] You don't drink liquids for 12 hours.

You're then exposed to an allergen.

You then provide a urine sample.

The urine sample is taken by the clinic

and it's put through a centrifuge

and then injected back into your body.

- That's right. You get injected with your own pee.

- [Rutledge] I mean, my first thought

is that someone had had a little too much to drink

and they were like, you know, I bet your pee could heal you.

And they're like, you wouldn't dare.

- You would think with all of the ridiculous cure-alls

we've had throughout human history,

we'd be done with that.

But, it just keeps happening.

- [Rutledge] The theory is that the antibodies created inside

you when you were subjected to your allergens

is basically then resubmitted into your body.

So, it's almost like your own little mini vaccine

to help you fight those allergies

and over time overcome them.

When you say it out loud, you go,

oh, that kind of makes sense.

But then when you think about it,

you're like, so my pee will cure me?

That's a tough sell.

- [Henry] Although unconventional,

it seems to work.

- [Martin] Newspapers began running testimonials

and they're singing its praises.

It has helped with their hay fever,

their asthma, their eczema.

It has even relieved headaches,

and they make it sound like urine therapy

is the best thing ever.

- [Henry] It would be great if your own waste

could become your own cure, but it's a cure with a catch.

- There are so many problems

with injecting your own urine back into your body.

- [Kavitha] Urine is what your body has already decided to get

rid of.

It contains urea and ammonia

and just all kinds of concentrated waste products.

Injecting it back into the body

forces your kidneys to filter it all over again,

leading to dehydration and kidney stress.

- [J Mack] In 1976, a committee of doctors investigate this

clinic and they find no evidence

that these treatments actually work.

- [Kavitha] There seems to be something about the culture

of the '70s where people were a little fast and loose

with their own health.

- Injecting pee may have been bad for you,

but surely a nice cool drink of water on a hot day

was perfectly safe, right?

Not in the '70s.

- [Austin] In the days before video games and cell phones,

do you know what kids did to entertain themselves?

They went outside.

- [Jason] You're outside playing. It's a hot summer day.

You would just refresh yourself with the garden hose.

- [Brian] Drinking from the hose is a core memory.

For people of my generation, it was it, man.

You were punished for going inside your house,

and that would be chores or some other nonsense.

- If you went inside,

there was always the chance your parents would tell you

you weren't allowed to play with your friends anymore.

So, drinking out of a hose was a way to get a drink

without having to risk going inside

and having mom tell you to stop.

- [Jason] You can still taste it.

You crank the spigot, you lift it up to your lips,

and you got that first sip and it was off.

It didn't taste right.

But, you know what?

You drank it anyway and you went right back to playing.

- [Henry] Turns out that strange taste isn't the water,

it's your hose.

- [Martin] In late 1941, the Japanese military

pushes toward the Dutch East Indies,

and the United States is cut off, almost entirely,

from rubber.

- [Dan] They had to come up with a synthetic version.

This was called the Emergency Rubber Project.

- [Martin] What this project produces

is a synthetic alternative to rubber.

The only problem is that

what makes this material malleable is lead.

- [Dan] After the war, this rubber substitute,

which is called PVC,

becomes this universal material

that's used in all kinds of things, including garden hoses.

And when one of these synthetic hoses sits out in the sun

for days or weeks or whole summers on end, they break down.

And those chemicals that are in the PVC

leach into the water that's inside the hose.

- It's more than just a disgusting flavor.

This hose water contains

up to 100 times the safe level of lead.

So, you're actually ingesting

the stuff that goes into literal bullets.

- [Rebecca] Lead is a neurotoxin. In other words, it

destroys neurons.

And you actually can have not just cognitive defect,

you can lose your mind effectively

because of chronic exposure to lead in small amounts.

- I though it was the copper end of the hose,

the taste of the copper coming in my mouth.

As it turns out, it was the taste of poison.

- [Henry] After a series of damning consumer reports,

hose manufacturers finally upgrade their formula.

- [Austin] It's kind of too little, too late.

By the early 2000s, consumers are,

one, wary of their municipal water,

and two, more likely to buy bottled water.

On top of that,

kids are more likely to be playing video games

or chatting with their friends indoors.

Drinking from the hose is sort of over,

and it's sort of sad.

- [Brian] I wouldn't go back in time and not drink from the

hose, I think I gained more

from being outside drinking from the hose than I lost

with whatever health problems I'm going to develop.

- Maybe it was a bad idea,

but that hose water really did hit the spot.

- The '70s were great if you had big, beautiful hair.

But what if you had little or no hair?

Well, there was a fix that could help you.

Unfortunately, it really, really hurt.

- [Adam] Jim Morrison has long flowing locks.

The Beatles are growing their hair out.

My gosh, there's even a musical on Broadway called "Hair."

- You did not want to be the bald guy in a singles bar.

You wanted to have that full head of rich hair.

So, if God didn't give you that,

you were going to do whatever you could

to make it look like he did.

- [Adam] There was nothing subtle about it,

but men felt they needed

to have a thick, luscious mane of hair on their heads.

The idea of having a hairpiece is much more widely accepted.

- [Henry] In the '60s and '70s,

men are buying hairpieces like never before.

And some of the most famous heads in Hollywood

are crowned in fake hair.

The problem is toupees at the time

are often unruly and unreliable.

- Any good toupee was made from real human hair

woven into a flesh-colored mesh,

and it was attached using a form of cement,

which had its own problems

because the toupee would get hot.

- It's like you're gluing this thing to your head,

and if you start to sweat, maybe it falls off.

- [Hakeem] These things are super expensive,

and because they're prone to flying off,

you got to worry about getting laughed at

after spending a fortune.

- [Negin] There were running jokes about it

on "The Carol Burnett Show," on "Match Game."

This became like a big part of joke culture.

- [Henry] But a breakthrough from World War II

is about to be repurposed for the human head.

- [Adam] Scientists during the Second World War

realized that plastic can be extruded

and spun out like a fine thread

that can be woven into a rope

for parachute cables and parachute scraps.

So now the technology exists to take plastic

and turn it into gossamer thin strands.

Strands very much like the hairs on our head.

- [Martin] Instead of using an adhesive

to make your toupee stay on your head,

they would stitch these clumps

of synthetic hair into your scalp.

- [Hakeem] Synthetic hair transplants

weren't the very first type of hair transplant.

Prior to that, there were natural hair transplants

where they would take hair from the back of your head

and replant it in the front of your head.

Incredibly painful process.

So, with the synthetic hair, you're not moving hair,

you're actually adding new stuff to the head.

- [Martin] You can style it, you can put products in it.

You don't have to worry about it

getting blown off in the wind.

You can go swimming with it on your head.

It looks like the better solution than the toupee.

- [Henry] By 1979, there are 30 clinics in America

implanting synthetic hair into thousands of heads.

But customers are getting a lot more than a new hairline.

- Stitching bundles of plastic hair into human heads.

What could go wrong?

- It's essentially like plugging fishing line

into your head.

- [Martin] The material that is producing it

contains an ingredient list that's a little bit alarming.

- [Adam] People are willingly putting

within a few inches of their brain

petroleum, limestone, natural gas, and ammonia.

Why on earth would you want that showed

into your head in bundles?

- [Hakeem] The body knows something's not right

and the immune system reacts to this synthetic hair.

It can result in inflamed scalps and massive pain.

The body rejects the fibers,

and in some cases, push them right back out.

- [Negin] In order to stop the infection from spreading,

some people have to get part of their scalp removed.

And one patient even finds a needle in his head.

- [Jason] So, by 1983, 10,000 victims of synthetic hair

implants have been identified.

- [Martin] Because of this, the FDA bans the synthetic hair

implant as a medical device.

It's the first time

that the FDA ever banned a medical device.

- Sure hair is important, but so is keeping your scalp.

- Your bed is usually a safe space,

one you can always depend on.

But somehow, the '70s even found a way

to make sleeping a dance with danger.

- [Natalia] When you look at the United States

in the 1960s versus the 1950s,

there are some real changes in pop culture that are obvious.

One place this shows up

is in how people decorate their homes.

- [Jason] '50s furniture has structured edges, clean lines.

It's sophisticated, but very conservative.

- [Negin] So by the '60s, informality is the thing.

Chairs get replaced by cushions,

and then by the end of the decade,

everything is replaced with like a beanbag

that has no structure.

- [Natalia] In around 1967,

a student designer named Charlie Hall has an idea.

What if he can make something with even less structure

than a floor cushion?

- [Hakeem] Charlie figures water would work best

for a big flat surface.

Then it comes to him. How about a big flat mattress?

- [Jason] It's an 8 by 8 vinyl mattress and he dubs it

the waterbed.

- Even before this thing goes to market, it has gone viral.

- Well, one example is that Hugh Hefner,

who, of course, just represents the era,

orders a custom waterbed right away that's green velvet.

- Jefferson Airplane wants one.

I mean, all of the hot influencers of the time

want this waterbed even before it hits the market.

- It spreads in California and the counterculture

just by word of mouth alone,

and that's what really starts this big national trend.

- So much coming out of California.

It's like the, it makes sense when you look at it

that then Silicon Valley also came out of California, right?

When the waterbed is your precedent.

- [Hakeem] By 1971, Hall has a patent and his waterbeds

in department stores around the country.

- [Negin] There is like a nationwide craze.

They have really fun marketing campaign.

They have a poster that says,

"Two things are better in a waterbed.

One of them is sleep."

- [Henry] America's love affair with the waterbed

continues well into the '80s.

Eventually, one in every five beds sold is a waterbed.

- [Natalia] The market is crowded.

All these sellers are desperate to stand out.

So they release these over-the-top ad campaigns

where they're crowing about their low, low, low prices.

- Come and get your free money at Country Boy Waterbeds.

- [Henry] At its height, there are over 1,200 companies

pumping up a $2 billion industry,

but competition drowns the market with cheap knockoffs.

- [Hakeem] A bed filled with water

is one place you definitely don't want to cut corners.

- [Jason] You could puncture it with a piece of jewelry.

Your dog or cat could jump on the bed.

And if one of those claws goes through that thing,

all of a sudden now you've got a flood.

It's all the dangers of water delivered in your mattress.

- [Austin] A waterbed weighs nearly one ton.

That's like having a small car in your bedroom.

- [Henry] Rumors spread about heavy waterbeds

crashing through ceilings.

Now, some of that might be urban legend,

but waterbeds do hide real dangers.

- [Jason] There is a freak accident in 1976 in Ventura,

California, where a woman is sleeping on her waterbed.

So, this rogue wave gets created inside her waterbed,

which as you can imagine, sort of pops her out of the bed,

and then the mattress sort of follows her,

and so, plops right out on top of her.

- [Natalia] By 1983, damage from waterbeds become such a problem

that 60% of California landlords ban them.

- [Henry] And surprisingly, the biggest risk from waterbeds

has nothing to do with water.

- So, you had to heat the waterbed

if you didn't want the bed to be very, very cold.

So, it used a pretty traditional heating coil of that era.

- Like many heating devices of this era,

these heaters lack safety devices

and are prone to causing electrical fires.

And you'd think that 200 gallons of water

would douse the danger.

But, because water conducts electricity,

it can actually make an electrical fire worse.

- [Negin] So you see these stories

throughout the '70s and early '80s

of mattresses bursting into flames

and then setting the entire bedroom on fire.

- [Austin] By the late 1980s, the old heating coils

are replaced with newer, safer, insulated pads

that automatically shut off

when they hit a certain temperature.

- [Henry] What ultimately turns the tide on water beds

isn't fires or crushing the occasional owner.

It's just a shift in taste.

- Though you can find waterbeds today,

even though they're safer,

many apartment buildings don't allow them.

So in essence, the waterbed party is over.

- As we look back at the '70s,

whether we were drinking lead from a hose,

running naked from the police,

or wondering, hey, why did my car just blow up?

The more dangerous it was, the more fondly we remember it.

And somehow we lived to tell the tale.

It's what made our hazardous history

survival of the fittest.