You have to be a certain age to get this

[dixiegrrrrl]

[djean111]

1. Caps!

Yeah, they did smell good.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Me too, but I don't miss my ears ringing. n/t

[hay rick]

3. Cowboys and Indians!

I'm not dead. You missed me!

[JBoy]

4. I used to have a cap-powered potato gun

"Completely harmless", unless you shot someone in the eye with it...

[RoccoR5955]

5. Mom never let us have toy guns

so we went out and got those little rocket things that you put a cap in and they made a pow when they landed.
Or we would just bang them up with a rock.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Like banging them with a rock on a bigger rock was safe or something.

I wore glasses as a kid, which saved my eye one time when we were rocking caps.

[Brother Buzz]

10. Safety glasses? What about ear protection?

I would strike an entire roll of caps stood on end with the end of a baseball bat on the sidewalk; sometimes I'd even use a twenty-ounce claw hammer. It was louder then a firecracker, WAY LOUDER!

[Callmecrazy]

22. my ears are ringing Just thinking about that...

Hit a whole roll of caps with a hammer and hope they don't catch fire.

[Brother Buzz]

25. There was not much smoke and little heat, but damn, it was loud!

Another way I would amuse myself was to ignite the individual spots with a magnifying glass. No report, just a little fizzle. Boring.

[dixiegrrrrl]

40. I consider that preparation for rock concerts years later...

[Arkansas Granny]

42. We never thought about hitting an entire roll! We just did them one at a time.

[progressoid]

7. I remember!

We'd go through a roll and then go back and load the individual ones that didn't fire.


Apparently you can still get these plastic ones....

[Florencenj2point0]

8. hit them with a rock on the side walk!

loved it. Do they still make them?

[Florencenj2point0]

9. My grandchildren can't touch them but I will

[progressoid]

12. I don't know about the paper ones but

here are a bunch of the plastic ones:

https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/bb-air-guns/edison-cap-guns/

[geardaddy]

27. Interesting that they allow those to be sold in the U.K.

Some of those guns look real!

Here in the US they have required that they all have bright colors even on squirt guns so that people don't mistake them for actual firearms.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Caps! Gunpowder!

I remember wadding up a whole roll of them and hitting them with a hammer. Not much of an explosion but sometimes there was a satisfying *pop*.

[Zorro]

36. Did that once with a croquet mallet

Parents came running because they thought it was a gunshot.

[Laffy Kat]

13. Me too!

You didn't even need a cap gun. You could always just put them on the sidewalk and hit them with a brick.

[DawgHouse]

14. I used to sit at the end of the driveway with a hammer and pop these.

[Tom Kitten]

15. Yes, and remember the toy "bombs" you could load with them?

Gee I wonder why they stopped making them? What's wrong with the idea of a cute little toy bomb for children?

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. Oh man, I had for gotten all about those.

We had them
Problem was we lived in a tiny logging town where there were no sidewalks so we had to use the black top road edge to popping caps, and sometimes the lookout was too engrossed in the caps to warn of an oncoming truck.
At some point, of course, we noticed the trucks, they are noisy.

[Mendocino]

20. I had one of those,

still might.

[IcyPeas]

16. Do you remember Cigarette Loads

you stuffed it into the middle of the cigarette and when it burned down to it it would explode (a little explosion) but enough to scare a smoker.

My brother did this once to my father. Dad was not amused.

[Major Nikon]

21. I put one in my dad's pipe one time. Blew burning tobacco everywhere.

It didn't go well for me.

[Renew Deal]

26. lol

[Callmecrazy]

23. Youy can still get them at the fireworks stores... nt

[marked50]

17. The real test for paper cap users

was if you could ignite them with just the edge of your fingernail.

[JudyM]

28. Ooh, that's hardcore! I used a rock. And usually about 10 tries per cap.

[marked50]

32. Sharp edges always worked but

you couldn't beat the badge of honor with the singed fingernails..

[JudyM]

33. Oh, yeah, totally!

[Mendocino]

19. But did you ever

use a roll of caps, a straight pin and tinfoil to make a firecracker? Good times! I also remember when you could buy potassium nitrate off the shelf in drug stores.

[malthaussen]

39. Yep. We used to destroy model ships with them, and a little lighter fluid.

Build ship, sprinkle fluid liberally, create a few cap bombs, and put it in the creek and watch it explode, burn, and melt. Good stuff. It's amazing none of us didn't lose fingers, eyes, or other body parts.

-- Mal

[NaturalHigh]

24. I miss that smell too.

It's been a long time since I played with those. I didn't even know they still made them.

[applegrove]

29. I was never allowed the gun but used to set them off with a pebble from our street.

[dixiegrrrrl]

35. Rocks seem to be more popular in this thread than halving a cap gun.

Back in the mid 1950's, girls didn't get to have cap guns, and my shit for brains brother would not share his.
So, I was relegated to the rock.
Sigh.
Scarred my whole life, that did .

[valerief]

30. I have a friend who, as a child, used to shoot the cap gun inside her mouth and

blow out the smoke. I thought that was the funniest thing, so funny I put in the beginning of my last novel.

[Paper Roses]

31. Geeze, thanks for reminding me. Caps..loved them

Bang them with a rock or if you were lucky enough, you had a cap gun. No thoughts ever that this was dangerous, then or ever. Times were so much more simple then. I believe this was in the 1940's. A roll of caps was probably 5 cents.

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. We still had them in the 60s

Candy cigarettes too. Good times.

[applegrove]

37. We still had them in the 1970s.

[Blue_Tires]

38. I inhaled so much of it

there's probably traces of it still in my bloodstream...

[47of74]

41. Yeah I remember those

Back in the day when we had toy guns here.

I just preferred hitting them with a hammer.