What became of “Greenie Stick’em Caps” and other paper caps and cap guns in general? It seems like they quietly faded away. If memory serves, the “greenies” were made by Mattel.
I still see cap guns in the toy section at supermarkets and pharmacies on a regular basis. I used to have both kinds as a kid. One of my favorite things to do was just take the big paper rolls of caps and bash the whole thing with a hammer.
My favorite thing was to drill out the orange tip and drill out the plastic at the end of the barrel. I would then pull the trigger a bunch of times and inhale the smoke out of the end of it. I was blowing perfect smoke rings years before I ever touched a cigarette.
The paper rolls were better. The plastic rings or strips tasted awful. And those string snap boms things, would make me choke.
I haven’t seen the paper-roll caps in years. The plastic ring style caps and capguns seem to have take over. Was it a safety issue? God knows anything even remotely hazardous gets banned these days.
My guess is that one of them caught on fire and spread to a house. Also it was possible to multiple caps (the paper ones) all under the hammer and have a pretty good bang, I could see that catching on fire.
Based on my cap gun experience in the late eighties I’d say they are just more attractive to kids.[ul][li]They were louder.[/li][li]The guns were more reliable mechanically.[/li][li]The overall operation of the gun seemed much more realistic (especially with revolvers.)[/li][/ul]
There was a bigger cap gun too. It was a revolver that you actually loaded. The caps where little red plugs about 3mm big.
Does any one remember those? What was the name?
I once almost burned down a garage by hitting five rolls of caps with a hammer. The paper caught fire and spread to the box, which blew into the wall. Luckily I was able to dump a half a bottle of grape soda on it before it spread any further.
My favorite activity with the paper roll type was to unroll the caps and then light one end on fire. Fun for the whole family!
I’ve seen a section with caps in a sporting store a few months ago.
The roll caps are dangerous in one way. kids always at some point decide to hit a role on a sidewalk with a hammer. The hammer pops back a bit, and they become half deaf for a while.
We used to rotate family Christmas Eve dinner & gift opening among the various aunts & uncles. Every few years, we were at Uncle George’s, where he would gather up all the discarded wrapping paper and throw it in the fireplace. Concealing a roll of those caps in your pocket, and then hiding strips inside various pieces of wrapping paper always created a sensational response when they were thrown into the fireplace!
Ah, yes. the old box of caps in the burning barrel phase of childhood. The same time of life when some kids put aerosol cans in the barrel. Boom! Watch the rusty barrel blow apart. Most farmers eventually missed a can, and the explosion took place.
The other thing you could do with a roll of caps was scratch them with your thumb to set them off (if they were really dry).
Good times
Si
If that’s what kids used to do, I can understand why they don’t sell them anymore. They weren’t made by RJ Reynolds, were they?
I had a little spud gun styled like a tiny revolver - but holding only one cartridge - a little triangular cutter with a recess at the back end into which you stuffed a little folded wad of paper caps. The hammer would strike the caps and the gases from the explosion would fire the little triangular piece of potato out of the barrel quite a good distance.
I made a replacement cartridge in metalwork - one that took one of the far more powerful plastic caps (cut from a ring or strip) and would hold a small ball bearing instead of a piece of potato. It wasn’t very reliable, but when it worked, it was pretty impressive - especially when I augmented the cap with a bit of black powder.
Actually, I was a bit fond of doing things like that - it’s a minor miracle that I still have all my fingers.
I’m pretty sure there won’t be anything remotely like those guns on sale now, probably in part due to reckless modification such as mine.
We used to get the paper caps, unroll them then fold them in half width ways (this would break the surface of each of the little dots of explosive) then wrap it up into as tight a ball as possible then wrap that ball as tightly as possible in sellotape before making a little fuse. If you jammed one of these in a little hollow with the ‘fuse’ pointing downwards then lit it you’d have about 8 seconds to leg it.
I remember them being pretty powerful and also remember the time we made a giant one out of 10 or so rolls of caps and wound up blowing a whole in my mates parents fence. This was not my first or only experiment in amateur pyrotechnics and I to am amazed I didn’t lose a finger or something!
To answer the OP I haven’t seen them on sale in the UK for ages now, I remember them getting harder and harder to get hold of at the time I was making homemade bangers (about 1988) with them. I suspect they’ve been banned under health and safety rules which is a shame really…
I havent seen a cap-gun that used the paper rolls of caps for sale in years; you can still get the caps in a couple of places though…
I agree.
When the small plastic ones came out, I remember that those were the best ones. The paper ones sucked, if you used them as intended. The feed mechanism wasn’t very good and they weren’t that loud. The only thing they were good for was to use them in all of the ways mentioned here, outside of the gun.
The red plastic ones were far better, and those black cap guns with the grey cylinder were coveted possessions among kids.