One that particularly stroke me as exceptionally sadistic is the Bluebeard by Charles Perrault (a contemporary of H. C. Andersen and with similar acclaim).
Well ... lead is dangerous for completely different reasons. And anderson's toy soldier was of tin!
I read perrault too, including bluebeard, and enjoyed it. The only book I can remember being really scared of was an illustrated version of 'the spider and the fly', which is not a fairy tale at all (though it is rather lovely). Movies tended to be scarier ('wallace and gromit' comes to mind), likely on account of the more vivid imagery. And we see now how dangerous video can be, especially for small children, in the form of youtube and tiktok; worrying about how scary a story is seems like trifling nonsense when the real danger and harm take a completely different form.
That said, my little sister seems to have been much more sensitive to scary things than I, at a given age. At ~10, she gave up partway through both the lord of the rings and harry potter, despite being rather taken with both (whereas, I read lord of the rings at ~5 and harry potter at ~12 with no problem). So I don't know; maybe I was unique. n=2; draw your own conclusions :)
Just as an aside, Anderson's 'Tin Soldier' (of the 1838 publishing) was a generic popular Tin Soldier mass produced for 50+ years since 1775 using a variety of pewter, tin, lead, and other metals.
They were sold 'raw" (uncoloured), enameled, or hand painted.
These are classic examples of you can't trust the name.
Anyways, I wouldn't be able to go into details in this answer as there are many, and many to explain. I found this summary which you may find interesting: https://www.abebooks.com/books/the-gruesome-origins-of-class...
One that particularly stroke me as exceptionally sadistic is the Bluebeard by Charles Perrault (a contemporary of H. C. Andersen and with similar acclaim).