'The Amazing Spiderman Web Shooter' was a favorite childhood toy

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/14/the-amazing-spiderman-web-shoo.html

Careful kid, you’re going to shoot your eye out.

Also different times man. Kids have way more choices on how to spend their free time, also if a parent decides to buy a shitty toy isn’t that on the parents and not the toy?

I’m a child of the 90’s, and my web shooters were the silly string like cans attached to my wrists. I know, I know. Mine were shit and yours were the bomb, but I didn’t knew at the time.

Good times were had.

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What kind of parenting standard accepts branded silly string?

I think I was 16 when I bought the silly string version. And my parents nearly deported me.

Sadly, most parents seem to want branded everything for their kids. Hence America today.

The day that my parents took my Voltron because it was painted with lead-based paint is one of the saddest days in my life.

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Greatest toy ever made.

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A guaranteed ticket to the principal’s office.

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Wasn’t Silly String banned in various locations during the 80s or 90s, due to the fire hazard?

Clearly you haven’t seen what silly string does to car paint.

Or how flammable it is.

I think my entire town/village has technically banned it.

I think the bigger problem with those things is that they appear to be based on this version of Spiderman:

Whose powers peak at a fanny pack full of Marlboros, 2 cans of dollar store silly string, and failing to entertain at your friend’s birthday party.

Think they currently come with a dart shooter though.

Where I’m at it was apparently because it was choking/poisoning rare water fowl.

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Hey, when I was a kid, it wasn’t considered a fun day unless two or three neighborhood kids were impaled playing Jarts, or knocked unconscious with those glass clacker-ball things. Good times, good times…

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I always preferred taking a water rocket to the ribs.

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While we’re on banned toys, I still remember a nerf gun (or maybe it was an off brand?) that was basically a dart gun built into a pen. There were other stuff in the line like a voice recorder / pen and one that held a couple tiny race cars and could launch them across the floor with the press of a button

I brought it in and shot my teacher with it, got held in for recess for a week. Good thing I got that out of my system pre columbine, I suspect I’d have been expelled a few years later.

You’ll shoot your mom’s eye out, kid.

you old timers can scoff and harumph all you want… but thanks to all of these safety rules we’re no longer an endangered species.

I received this when I was five, and played with it for about five minutes. Shortly after putting it on I shot my sister. My mom took it away, and I never saw it again. :frowning:

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Those were…glass??!? Mine disappeared because they annoyed mom. Same with my lightsaber. :frowning: I miss both of ‘em.

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Apparently hard, brittle acrylic. So they could shatter/explode on occasion.

We still had them in the 80’s after they were “banned” and I definitely still see them around, just made from different materials. I could never figure out what they were even supposed to be for. We just launched them at GI Joe whenever possible.

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Glass didn’t fit my memories. I’ve seen versions that were HDPE spheres harnessed like a hinge to a stick, but that doesn’t work as well as the strings.

As for purpose, besides annoying adults, it was a coordination game. It took practice to get the balls to hit above and below the connecting piece.

No. No. They were for launching at GI Joe. You lead with the clackity thing. Then softened them up with some fire crackers. Then you swept up the survivors with Thunder Cats and vehicles.

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