The Childhood Weapons Cache: Reviews! Nostalgia!

[Alucard]

As mentioned in my rather pointless post about the Shout n Shoot II, I'm gonna be reviewing some of my favorite (and hopefully your favorite) weapons from way back when. You're probably thinking oh, this is going to be about the Shout N Shoot isn't it? Well no, you'd be wrong. That's later. Today...we start with this, one of the biggest and the baddest.


The Ultimator.

Released in 1994 by Mattel, this big honkin rocket launcher was almost too powerful and heavy for me to handle. Seriously, to a small kid this thing would kick. But as I got a bit older my appreciation for it grew and I could handle it with ease.

You only had two shots with the thing, so you had to make them count, and inbetween the first and the second you'd have to prime the thing to fire again with a small lever that created the most godawful screeching noise I'd ever heard, it stays in my head to this day. It was NOT an efficient weapon in a heavy firefight on the battlefield of your front yard...at all.

But it was certainly a rewarding one, because if you managed to hit some kid in the face with one of those rockets...they WOULD go home crying. Guaranteed. This thing had some serious power, it let loose one of the most earth shattering "KLOOONNNGGG!" noises I've ever heard a kid's air powered weapon make. Firing it straight up into the air, it'd go for quite a distance before falling back down, so you had some good range with this thing.

In all, a good fun weapon, but you wouldn't want to use it as your only line of defense.

Plus, it had the most...machismo oozing commercial ever. A bunch of bullies stick up some kid with their nerf guns, and the kid whips out the Ultimator (where the hell was he hiding it? the thing is seriously huge) and sends them running scared. The announcer sums it all up with "Ultimator rules...you weenie." How could you not want one?

I wish I could find said ad on youtube, but, no luck.

[Phosphor Glow]

Yeah I remember seeing ads for it. It looked completely awesome...but no one I knew ever had it. I soooo wanted it back in the day though.

[Mister Pigwell]

Heh awesome.
I'll be awaiting for you to hit the ones I actually had.

[Alucard]

Alrighty, I've got nothing but time to kill this afternoon, so some more fun.

Let's just get this piece of crap out of the way:

Don't mess with Shout N Shoot II indeed.

Okay, granted...I owned the first model of the Shout N Shoot, but they were both total pieces of garbage.

Did they look awesome? Yes. Did they make you feel like a cool walking robot of death? Yeah. Did they eerily resemble the scouters from DBZ? Heck yeah they did, that was totally weird.

But much like many toys that promised great things...this one kinda fails to deliver.

Okay, yeah. You talk into the mic, and it shoots. ...just not very powerfully or far at all. I'd like to know what the hell sort of modifications the one in that commercial had, because the stream the headset fired was NEVER that long range or wide.

Also, if you were playing say, capture the flag or something, and you went to talk to one of your team mates and forgot you had one of the most idiotic forms of weaponry ever strapped to your head...yeah you were gonna shoot your buddy in the eye.

The main problem: The thing would just eventually stop working, without any sort of warning or reason. I had my first one fail and my parents took it back to the store for a new one, and the same thing happened to it. The little light on the headset would still come on, but the firing mechanism would eventually just fail. I'm sure having a microphone around WATER had nothing to do with this! So ultimately you'd be left with a cool cyborg headset and a big pink battery pack.

Cool right?

...nah, not really.

Taking a Konami Laser Scope and making it shoot water seemed like a great idea at the time, but a short range, wimpy stream, and inevitable system failure made this water weapon one to avoid.

[acressl]

The commercial for that thing was always funny to me because the kids involved in the "firefight" seem to think nothing of that thing on his head. You'd think they'd at least be curious were they not familiar with the Shout N' Shoot.

[Alucard]

Jul 14, 2008 15:01:19 GMT -5 @acressl said:

The commercial for that thing was always funny to me because the kids involved in the "firefight" seem to think nothing of that thing on his head. You'd think they'd at least be curious were they not familiar with the Shout N' Shoot.

Haha.

In the 90's it wasn't uncommon for kids to run around wearing Skip It's, Moon Shoes, and other various forms of day glo plastic gimmickry, but yeah, a big headset with a cord running out of it is a bit...different.

[Alucard]

Okay, for something a little different...here's something that you couldn't really fire anything in a literal sense with, but it was still totally badass and I loved mine so I HAVE to include it.

The Eliminator TS-7!

I don't remember what year exactly this thing came out, and I don't remember the commercial for it at all but I remember that was what made me want it. It had to have been around 1991-1992 because they were still airing re-runs of Gi Joe on the USA network that christmas morning.

This thing was...awesome.

It was a bigass gun that turned into other various forms of a bigass gun...and it was also a sword...and a dagger.

It had all sorts of lights and sound effects, from lasers to machineguns to...um, power sword...sounds.

Well, I retract my previous statement...this gun COULD fire something if you knew what you were doing, we discovered it on accident using the power sword part of it in a lightsaber battle in the front yard...if you swing the power sword too hard, the actual blade part can fly off and hit your other buddy in the forehead, making him don the proverbial crimson mask.

It's hard to find ANY additional info about this thing online, the image of it alone I had to capture from a youtube video about the 1992 Sears Wish Book!

Later on, another version of this was made that actually did fire things. It might be featured later.

[Claw died]

Man...I think I mighta also had the Ultimator.



I'm the Charlton Heston of toy weapons!

[Alucard]

Here's where it probably all started for many of us

The Super Soaker 100.

Gotta love that commercial! Those blues brothers kids really showed that yuppie girl! Take that! Also gotta love their attire. Half of a suit, Ray Bans, and swim trunks.

Not the most powerful at the time, but near it. Great range for it's size and not too heavy to carry. The only gripe I have about it is a silly one...but if you ever dropped it, it was toast. The barrel was VERY fragile. And sadly, that is the fate of mine. It's not my favorite pistol styled Super Soaker, but close.

I also had a 50, which was much of the same.
www.sscentral.org/reviews/ss50.html

My favorite though...was the MDS. It was essentially the same design as the 50, but with a tweest! A handle at the end of the barrel allowed you to move around the nozzle without actually turning the gun its self. If you had someone up above you, you could just twist the barrel to the left or right, raise it up, and fire. It was pretty damn clever for the time, even if it was a simple gimmick.
www.sscentral.org/reviews/ssmds.html

Now now, I know what you're thinking, VOID, man...what the hell? No mention of the big cannon ones that would like shoot a hole through you?

Oh don't worry...

They're on the way.

[Mister Pigwell]

Heh I had the 100, also had the 50 in a few different time frames.

Those were great.

Best thing about the 50 was disconnecting the bottle and screwing in a hose with a female attachment on it.

The MDS I had too it seems... tho I remember that being called the 250.


My memory is bad...

[acressl]

That lookaway shot take from Jake (or is that Elwood?) at 0:17 is awesome. Shot Buffy so good she consciously threw a glass of punch in her own face. Now that's water pressure right there.

[Alucard]

Jul 14, 2008 15:40:49 GMT -5 @acressl said:

That lookaway shot take from Jake (or is that Elwood?) at 0:17 is awesome. Shot Buffy so good she consciously threw a glass of punch in her own face. Now that's water pressure right there.

lmao, it is truly a watergun of a higher power.

[Claw died]

Man, I had that one too!


But I didn't have the Eliminator.

[Alucard]

Jul 14, 2008 15:46:28 GMT -5 Claw died said:

Man, I had that one too!


But I didn't have the Eliminator.

I really hope someone did, mostly so they can help me remember the name of the one that shot nerf-y things.

[acressl]

Hey are those faux uzi squirt guns with the fading ink that didn't really work all that well gonna make the list? I don't recall what they were called. Their's was a very short lifepan so I wouldn't be surprised if no one here had ever had one or even heard of them.

[Brandon Walsh is Insane.]

I used to have a T Shirt in Jr High that said Eliminator across the back, and once this Eliminator TS7 commercial came out, it became my nickname for the rest of my Jr High tenure.

I had forgot about that.

BTW, I remember the ink squirt guns, and LOVED the Super Soakers when they were simplistic.

Unfortunately, they got way too complicated.

I stopped with the water guns after getting that 2 gallon tank that tied to your back, and looked like a Ghostbusters proton pack.

[Alucard]

Jul 14, 2008 15:57:25 GMT -5 @acressl said:

Hey are those faux uzi squirt guns with the fading ink that didn't really work all that well gonna make the list? I don't recall what they were called. Their's was a very short lifepan so I wouldn't be surprised if no one here had ever had one or even heard of them.

Zap-It?

They just might.

[Alucard]

And now it's time for a toy that would get you killed today:


Entertech Automatic Water Weapons.

I'll be the first to admit, these were just barely a few years before my time, i.e. I was an infant when they were popular. But I did manage to get ahold of some Entertech squirt guns as handmedown toys later on in life, I also knew some friends of the family who owned them. I had a black Luger pistol (no orange safety tip). I used to play with it all the time and no one batted an eye, simpler times.

This is the kind of toy that would NEVER fly today. While the idea is cool, and the appeal is easy to see, news stories of police shooting kids for aiming realistic looking toy weaponry at them was all too common in the late 80's and early 90's, so it's easy to see why Entertech was later forced to paint these things ugly neon colors and eventually just fizzle out into obscurity entirely.

Performance wise, they were pretty mediocre. A little bit longer range than a normal run of the mill squirt gun, rapid fire shots. But they looked so cool and made cool noises, so yeah.

Larami also made these before the advent of the Super Soaker. I had one, it was a pretty generic assault rifle, with a blue water clip, green body, and pink barrel. It was hideous. I also had some sort of laser pistol, it was yellow, red, and orange. Sorta looked like a Star Trek phaser. I think it eventually ceased to be.

Once the Super Soaker came into existence, these all but disappeared.

[Alucard]

Zap-It!

Originally Zap-It seemed more intended to be a prank than a weapon. A replica (well...sorta) UZI that shoots disappearing ink. Because what could POSSIBLY be more hilarious than whipping out a real looking gun on someone, and THEN blasting them with ink with it. I don't imagine anything in that commercial would really go that way in real life. Whipping out a pistol on your mailman? BAD IDEA. Shooting your dad after a long day at the office with disappearing ink? Someone's going to bed without dinner that night for their shenanigans.

Zap-It was later revised as a competitor to the Super Soaker, it was an automatic like the Entertech weapons but now with the disappearing ink gimmick. You had your choice of red or blue ink so that you could tell who shot who if you were playing a team based game. Unfortunately, Zap-It ultimately fell by the wayside. Being little more than a low-powered gimmicked squirt gun that shoots disappearing ink (which you had to buy refills for that I don't recall being cheap), you really just ended up with an expensive electronic day-glo squirt gun.

Going up against a Super Soaker, you'd still get owned.

This is the way I remember Zap-It
youtube.com/watch?v=p-eBSbJ1PUs&feature=related

[Cap'n Crud]

I remember the Ultimator. One time at an Ame's store (a major northeastern US discount store chain at the time) we found one outside it's box and me and my bro used it to shoot down a stack of those giant power rangers dolls from a high shelf. Good times.