Sorry, no headline pun today.
We like to talk about the old days, and particular the "things kids today don't know". CArbon paper, dial phones, video tape, 8-tracks, etc. SO I got to thinking of tinsel. As a kid we used to festoon the Xmas tree with tinsel. Today tinsel comes in colors and is made of thin plastic strips like mylar. Can be clear or metalized for reflectivity. Similar stuff is also sold for filler in Easter baskets. On a Xmas tree it is supposed to look like icicles.
When I was a kid though, tinsel was metal. It was thin lead foil sliced into strips. It came in a flat package, the strands wrapped around a card. You peeled off a few strands at a time and tossed them over the tree branches. We kids discovered that you could wad the stuff up into dense little balls of lead. I could even melt it with my soldering iron.
Gathering it up off the tree later was difficult, hard to save much for next year.
Of course today, bare metallic lead would not be an easy sell to the EPA or the American mom shopping. And certainly a lot more expensive to produce. Apparently the FDA got rid of lead tinsel in 1972.