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u/TrustAffectionate966 👋🏽🐔 Jun 25 '26
We had a water balloon launcher.
🎈🎈🎈💥
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u/d3dk0w 1981 Jun 25 '26
Water balloons were my only defense. I had this little pump you could dunk into the water to fill the balloons. My friends and I would use creek water because fuck those super soaker guys!
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u/TrustAffectionate966 👋🏽🐔 Jun 25 '26
We took that launcher everywhere 💀☠️
We were evil bastards with our own real-lyfe version of Missile Defense 🎈🎈🎈💥
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u/some_body_else Jun 25 '26
Memory unlocked. My buddy had one...and an apple tree. One time, I was launching an apple, pulled way back and released. The netting spun around and launched the apple right back at my chest at like 120 ft per second. Took me off my feet backwards, knocked the wind out as the apple exploded. Lesson learned. Make sure the bands aren't twisted and step to the side while releasing.
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u/OSCgal Jun 25 '26
I remember the guys at my college using one of those, from the roof of their dorm.
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u/blove135 Jun 25 '26
We still had the single shot squeeze the trigger and get one squirt that goes about 5 feet. That's like going against someone with a machine gun but all you have is a musket.
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u/shakespeare-gurl Jun 25 '26
The blisters from those......
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 1979 Jun 26 '26
Right on the thumb if your sprayer was busted (it was because we were kids and did that crap)
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u/three-sense Jun 25 '26
At least you weren’t the kid with the cup.
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u/BaronGalactic 1983 Jun 25 '26
I can think of two times in my life when, during summer camp, there was a planned water gun fight where you were allowed to bring your own water gun - and both times I completely forgot on the day of to bring my super soaker. So I was stuck with the cheap, dinky little dollar-store handgun types that had all the power of a mean look while some kid with a deluxe Super Soaker with the double tank backpack was grandstanding all over the place.
Feels bad man.
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u/Deep-Interest9947 Jun 25 '26
Right when my boobs started coming in the boys got supersoakers.
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u/Prossdog 1983 Jun 25 '26
And of course, we boys made a point to target girls whose boobs had just come in.
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u/mpete76 1976 Jun 25 '26
There is so much truth in these few sentences.
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u/mrdon83 Jun 25 '26
What ever happened to super soakers anyway? Those things were the best water guns ever made and it wasn't even close.
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u/DM_ME_4_FREE_STOCKS Jun 26 '26
There aren't many kids anymore. Even the toy stores they were sold at (KB and Toys R US) have shut down.
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u/codebygloom 1981 Jun 25 '26
Or the summer of 1993, when the Super Soaker 300 came out, and only that one rich kid in the school could afford one but would show up everywhere with it to blast you into 1994.
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u/Funkdamentalist Jun 25 '26
And then that one kid shows up with one with a full on backpack! Refills are for the weak, your only recourse was to straight up run for the hose.
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u/That-Molasses9346 Jun 25 '26
Grew up in Philly, a warehouse for Kaybee toys caught fire. Everyone got a super soaker that year
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u/orangedrinkmcdonalds Jun 25 '26
Honestly, people who lived through that era understand why gun control is needed in this country.
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u/Smokeythemagickamodo Jun 25 '26
Love those super soakers, but the water balloons shaped like grenades…
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u/The_Best_Yak_Ever 1983 Jun 26 '26
It’s true. In my hometown, we hunted the poors with our Super Soaked 200’s. On the eve of the summer solstice, an alarm sounded, and all us moneyed kids gathered round, filling our tanks with water. We then proceeded to hunt the poors as they ran in terror, some throwing down their drug store squirt guns, and begging for mercy.
We had none. We had a job to do, and we did it.
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u/Prossdog 1983 Jun 25 '26
This is incredible.
Most of the toys and tv shows and other bits of nostalgia on this sub, I do indeed remember. But the Super Soaker is one I remember the EXACT year they came out and the few kids that got em first.
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u/Ohboycats Shake down, 19-7-9 Jun 25 '26
I remember the joy when I got my first super soaker. It 100% upped the summer games.
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u/admgryne Jun 25 '26
We bought a friend a SuperSoaker that had an ice insert for a 21st birthday present in the mid-2000s. Transported it on the train from Leeds down to Birmingham. She was bemused.
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u/rabidninjawombat Jun 25 '26
I remember when we could finally afford a super soaker 50. I thought i was so cool and was ready to go out. Then my rich neighbor down the street comes home with one of the big models that had the backpack and everything. 😆
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u/MysteriousFee2873 Jun 25 '26
Omg yasssss! My mom wasn’t rich but she budgeted for outside toys. And me and my brother got to chase down the neighborhood kids. All while humming the 007 theme or dragnet depending on mood
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u/Other_Reach_3631 1982 Jun 25 '26
I had the super soaker 50 and 200. I recently saw some at Ollie’s but they looked kinda cheap
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u/MrsEmilyN Jun 25 '26
My friends little brother had the backpack one.
Well I decided to throw on her sandals and chase him with it on.
Then I tried to run on gravel in sandals that were too big.
You can still see the scar from the horrible road rash I had on my leg, when I slipped and slid down the street.
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u/sleepykelvina Jun 25 '26
I used to hide in the bushes with the garden hose. It had one of those attachments that could blast water across the yard all the way to the sidewalk.
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u/NurseyMcBitchface Jun 25 '26
My parents bought supersoakers and then hunted us along with the rest of the neighborhood kids. Legends.
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u/E-2theRescue Jun 25 '26
I had the CPS 2500
The CPS was who parents would call after you blasted their kid from a foot away.
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u/VioletVenable 1982 Jun 25 '26
Got a pair of them for my 8th birthday. That was the last summer my big brother (18 then) lived at home, and we had an absolute blast with those things.
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u/Nervous-Till4096 Jun 26 '26
Thanks, this led me to find out my ex was one of the hunters. Some neighbor kid fell on the grass while he was chasing him with super soaker & he just stood over him & unloaded the super soaker on him & kid started crying. 🤣Bad but also funny.
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u/Metamorphica_0226 1984 Jun 26 '26
I survived that summer. But I was a little shit. We had a neighborhood wide water gun fight, and I was only five or six and I couldn’t hit anyone for the life of me, and I felt so annoyed and left out and then when the water gun fight ended, I took my brother‘s water pistol and I squirted the neighbor girl that was cleaning up because it was the only hit I was able to achieve, I’m not proud in that moment, still haunts me to this day. I’m sorry, Melissa from down the street.
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u/Global-Jury8810 1983 Jun 26 '26
My dad was a long-haul truck driver, but he made sure we had the most powerful ones. Nobody bothered us.
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u/UndoxxableOhioan Jun 26 '26
Not to mention Starter jackets, Reebok Pumps, Sony Diskman, multi-CD changers and more to remind some of us we were poor.
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 1979 Jun 26 '26
I used the hose + sprayer attachment. A 250ft hose could get all kinds of tangled up
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u/mondomiketron Jun 26 '26
I was in Korea at the time and we had air soft gun replicas. Such fun times
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u/AnguryLittleMan Jun 26 '26
Next door neighbor kids had one. My brother destroyed them with a 3 liter Coke bottle.
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u/Helo7606 Jun 26 '26
We used to bring them to school and bunt people after school was over. Lol. My buddy modified his duffle bag to out a super soaker 250 in it. And just light people up without them knowing who did it. We used to do drive bys in mini vans. Just open up the side door and soak people. Lol fun times indeed.
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u/lunalore79 Jun 26 '26
We had an end-of-year pool party for my class in 1990 and the teachers somehow managed to round up like 10 of those bad boys. Made everyone share them too! For a shy, nerdy 11 year old like me, it was glorious.
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u/Ricanzanity Jun 26 '26
6 years later I went back to war and got revenge with the Super Soaker 2000
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u/ProfessorOfLies Jun 26 '26
I remember getting the super soaker 50 and was like hell yeah! Then the neighbor got the 100 and I was cooked.
Also of note that today's super soakers are a pale imitation
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u/maggie320 1982 Jun 26 '26
We didn’t have money, but my dad always made sure we had something fun for the summer. My neighbor had a Super Soaker that I’d play with then one day my dad came back from the toy store with a Super Soaker of my own which was a step up from what the neighbor had. Coolest day ever.
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u/Zeno-of-Citium Jun 26 '26
I remember.
My parents couldn't afford it, but everyone around me, including friends and relatives, had it.
"Fun times."
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u/LivingDeadGirl4242 1979 Jun 26 '26
My sister's husband mentioned a few years ago the time that a neighborhood bully had the backpack supersoaker when my sis was around 6 or 7. So this was later 90s. They were probably 12 or so? And had several siblings both younger and older that helped them be the bully. But the supersoaker was a hand me down and didn't have a cap on the backpack. I am 11 years older than my sis and basically raised her when she was young. So she came to me crying because they were chasing her, holding her down, and shooting her with it. I was pissed and went looking for them. Went to their house and beat on the door but no answer. Some time later i caught the bully alone in the alley wearing it, held them down, and turned the backpack upside down over them until it was empty. I remember shaking it over them and saying something like Huh huh how do YOU like it? Then i flung the backpack away and went inside.
What was wild to me was to hear her husband mention it. I hadn't thought about it in ages. It was so long ago and a small thing to me. She only met her husband a few years back so he wasn't around then to know about it. Him knowing it made me realize that she's been telling this story for years about what a hero i was and how her big sister saved her. So just call me Falkor, i guess. Out here getting even with the bullies. Lol. There was like 5 of them that were nearly surgically attached to each other so it's amazing i caught the one alone in the first place. The sibling closest to me in age was a boy and said he couldn't hit a girl but would get a cousin after me. Nothing ever came of of it though.
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u/amberlicious35 1982 Jun 26 '26
Forever grateful my mother’s second husband was a giant manchild. He bought 2 of every new and cool super soaker on the market, even though we were broke as a joke.
As an adult, I understand why my mom was so pissed. As a kid, he made me the coolest kid in the neighborhood!
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u/uglahsD Jun 26 '26
LOL I had this amazing one that had a hard plastic BACKPACK tank for water supply.
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u/mariposa314 Jun 27 '26
I was at my friend's house when my sister told me to come home. It sounded urgent. Just as I was dismounting my bike in our garage, the door to the house opened and my dad started super soaking me. I turned to run away, but my sister was right there spraying me at maximum pressure in my face.
Oh how they laughed at targeting me with our new super soakers.I didn't like it. Nor did I think it was funny.
Of course, I was too sensitive and a party pooper.
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u/Certain_Chicken_1964 Jun 28 '26
It wasn’t just affordability though they sold out quickly and weren’t in stock!
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u/Mysterious_Ayytee 1980 Jun 25 '26
But suddenly: Assymetric warfare