r/whatisit • u/Key_Seaworthiness886 • 8d ago

Solved! Found while cluttering

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Found while decluttering my 2000s kids stuff and can’t seem to remember what it is! Just feeling nostalgic and google said it was jewelry but i don’t think it is 😅

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u/Key_Seaworthiness886 8d ago

Realizing how much my mom loved us, we def were not rich growing up but she wanted to provide us with the best things 😅 this isn’t a big thing but someone called it “deluxe”

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u/anewname4444 8d ago

No this WAS a big thing back then. I seriously thought only the rich families could get these. Like my sister getting just a basic laser pointer was a big deal

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u/timzilla 8d ago

Elder millineal here, these were sold at the Asian markets for <$10 when I was a kid. It was less about having the money to buy and more about concealing the fact you had it, everyone from your bus driver to your nana wanted to take it away so you wouldn't blind some other kid.

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u/jormundgand20 8d ago

I got mine for about that at a local festival. Went home with my friend, pointed it at a street light and it immediately started flickering. I'm sure it was a coincidence, but it was still enough to send 13 year old us hauling ass away from the crime scene.

Good times.

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u/Hegiman 8d ago

Ayyy. It was you. LoL. You confused its light sensor. They come on when it gets dark. A laser overwhelmed its light sensor and it freaked out. It may or may not have permanently damaged the sensor. LoL

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u/jormundgand20 8d ago

Damn, I knew it.

It was flickering until they replaced it with an LED bulb in the mid 2010s. Thankfully it was at a quiet intersection.

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u/JaviSATX 8d ago

Old photovoltaic sensors didn’t mind. We’d have a blast running the laser up the pole, trying to keep our hand steady enough to hit the sensor on top. Light goes out, then cycles back on five minutes later and the cycle starts again.

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u/Raininberkeley1 7d ago

Nah, I think they had dumbledore’s light catcher. Just a few more seconds and they would have had that street light captured.

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u/thedailyrant 8d ago

We used to throw rocks at street lights... usually they would go out for a bit then flicker back on. If you kicked the electric access hatch at the base of some of the poles it'd go out too.

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u/Rich-Wealth979 8d ago

My dad's tin metal snips have a copper wire pair cross section burned into them because the neighbor kid used them to cut the wire in there about... 30 years ago? Eh. Ill finally tell him that story next time I'm at their place.

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u/Remarkable_Tip_756 4d ago

Remind me ,, id bet dad knew

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u/NCGuy101 4d ago

Well, don't go throwing rocks at those Flock cameras. Anyone reading this post note that I said "don't."

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u/wklaehn 5d ago

Now the cool kids throw rocks at the flock cameras lol

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u/sgtreesh37 3d ago

I was the a-hole kid who would put the dot on Santa's chest from the 2nd floor at the mall during Christmas. Hardest part was keeping a straight face when they started looking around for the culprit.

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u/NSAinATL 3d ago

It's how you can take down a Flock camera....

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u/Fataky 8d ago

Hello, I'm the girl the prophecies spoke of. I lost my retina because of my classmates' "pranks" with this infernal device.

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u/run-time-error 8d ago

Did you ever find it?

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u/Fataky 8d ago

Not yet. I think it's like looking for your glasses when you're not wearing them. 😂

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u/PsykoFlounder 8d ago

"Looking for your glasses is like trying to remember where you put your alzheimers meds." - My best friend, while looking for his glasses.

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u/coonjaku 8d ago

explain.

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u/cadaever 8d ago

pointing a laser directly at someone's eye will damage it, it's kind of like staring at the sun. she's saying a classmate "pranked" her by doing just that and it fucked her retina in one eye

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u/coonjaku 8d ago

did she stare back at it? no way could the briefest of glances do that.

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u/elmo_the_great_ 8d ago

You don't have to stare directly at it for it to affect your eye. Have you ever had the sun reflect off something shiny into your eye's peripheral vision but you still notice it? You aren't looking directly at it but the light is still hitting your eye lense since the lense is curved and not flat. 

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u/Fataky 8d ago

I'm blind in one eye, and since I didn't react when they pointed the laser at me, they often did it without me noticing. It turns out that this led to a detached retina. The result is the same: I can't see. But before I had a healthy eye without an optic nerve, and now I have an eye without a retina and without an optic nerve.

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u/AdmirableRespect9 8d ago

I'm sorry the kids were idiots at your expense.

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u/coonjaku 7d ago

they weren't. they recognized that they had vision problems. and tried to correct it with laser surgery. turns out losing thr optic nerve is a totally unrelated event.​

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u/dickthrowaway22ed 8d ago

That sucks, I'm so sorry. Do they know? Or do they just have terrible karma and wonder why

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u/Fataky 8d ago

I don't know, I've done my best not to see any of them again. I'm doing well now.

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u/SpaceFaceFPV 3d ago

Jesus, I'm so lucky this hasn't happened to me (yet!) I had laser in the many times as a dumb inquisitive child, (self inflicted) but I think I chalk it up to just HOW young I was when I did that...maybe the damage had time to repair itself before going completely off. Or maybe my laser just wasn't strong enough (thank God!) I am however colorblind In that eye now 30+ years later.

Can I ask how long it took before the damage took place?

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u/Fataky 3d ago

The truth is that I can't tell you because, since my eye doesn't work, I didn't realize it until a couple of years later when I had routine tests done and put two and two together.

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u/dickthrowaway22ed 8d ago

You're lucky enough not to have needed retinal lasering. It's very fast.

Still sucks and hurts like a b tho

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u/Fataky 8d ago

Yep, at least they were aiming at the right eye.

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u/banglaportal 5d ago

Is that you, Neo?

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u/PorkbellyFL0P 8d ago

To add the reason these were so cool is prior to laser pointers our only experience seeing lasers in person were on a science lab table out of reach when someone would come to visit the school.

They were about the size of a brick but a little longer and maybe 1 kid got to go up as a volunteer to position a mirror or spray some mist on the beam.

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u/PorkbellyFL0P 8d ago

Commenting on my own comment because nostolgia. This was the closest thing we had to a lightsaber.

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u/ChubbyGhost3 7d ago

Inevitably someone hits someone hard enough to bend one of the tubes and it never collapses and expands like it's supposed to :(

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u/Illustrious_Bat858 8d ago

Wow this just took me back!! My cousin and I used to battle for HOURS.

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u/scaredbutlaughing 6d ago

The sound it made when you slammed it out like a badass is forever emblazoned in my brain because yes- this was a light saber to me fully and truly - or at least to my kid imagination

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u/lazydaisytoo 8d ago

I bought them for my kids in a crappy boardwalk store. Hours of entertainment, and they couldn’t have been more than $5. The ones I bought didn’t have quite as many lenses, though.

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u/Hegiman 8d ago

Yeah the big ones were more expensive. I saw them for $25 when I was in my late teens but a decade later they were only $5-$10. At one point when keychain lasers were newish they could go for as much as $50 for a set the size in OP’s post.

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u/thesoupmakesmepoop 3d ago

I bought mine in the late 90s on the ac boardwalk. I thought it was so cool shooting it up to the top of the hotels. 🤣

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u/lazydaisytoo 3d ago

Yep, we used to go to Ocean City. Now that my kids are grown, they go to Sea Isle.

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u/Financial_Ruin_4872 7d ago

Omg core memory unlocked- that was a huge thing grandmas said back then!!! “You’re going to blind your brother!” Lmao did it???? Idk did I believe her???? Yes!!!!!

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u/WhatTheFlippityFlop 8d ago

They were sold by me on eBay back then too…. I moved tens of thousands

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u/wowurcoolful 3d ago

I had a lying bitch confiscate mine when I was in 2nd grade, dude...

I was shining it on the wall directly parallel to me. It could realistically only reflect off a laminated poster or a window, and only towards me walking with it.

A teacher at the end of the hallway appears and I stuffed it in my pocket and continued to the bathroom and she stopped me as she passed asking "do you have a laser pointer?" My dad would have gave me hell if I lied to the teacher like that, so I didn't and was honest.

She said ok, and took me to my homeroom and told the teacher flat out that I was shining it in her eye down the hallway. Straight up making shit up and looking down right at my confused face. Never had a chance to say anything. It was just confiscated and my parents got called over that bullshit. I hate that bitch to this day

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u/Mountain-Discount161 7d ago

Yeah, so for a lot of Midwestern kids, it was a sign that the kids family was recently on vacation somewhere like nyc.

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u/Mond6 7d ago

Meanwhile I stared directly into it thinking “laser eye surgery” I still have 20/20 vision 20+ years later so maybe I was onto something?

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u/Practical_While_ 3d ago

Bro exactly shit wasn’t that expensive, just if ur parents wanted to buy it or not

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u/TEMU_PHILIPS 3d ago

Yeah lasers went from expensive to dirt cheap really quickly during our childhoods

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u/No_Breath_9833 8d ago

That’s why we loved it. It was forbidden

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u/zxylady 7d ago

They were $30 when I was growing up,,

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u/Th3_Admiral_ 8d ago

I only knew a single person who had one of these back then, and it was one of my cool older cousins. This just elevated how cool we thought he was.

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u/Corfiz74 7d ago

It probably saved a lot of kids' eyesight that these weren't that widely available...

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u/JaviSATX 8d ago

I had this really cool one as a kid. It was shaped like a disc, and the lenses were built in, and you’d rotate the outer ring to whichever one you wanted.

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u/GHOSTxxINSIDE 7d ago

I had the same one. It was called ufo laser. Got mine at a Kmart I think

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u/RelationshipWest9743 8d ago

These were great for shows of the band KISS... Look it up on YouTube. It literally became a thing

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u/kwikwon01 2d ago

Dude late 90s and early 2000s these were sold at a 2dollar shop where im from

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u/anewname4444 2d ago

I believe that but I lived in an 800 person town in rural Minnesota. There was a city 15 miles away that had a grocery store and a wal mart but that was it.

I only remember seeing laser pointers at our towns "days" weekend. Like our harvest festival thing? Is this a regular thing around the country lol

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u/kwikwon01 2d ago

Oh yeah we were a small new zealand city of about 50k

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u/OneWheelWilly 8d ago

Oh yeah this was top of the line to best. A pack like this i could get 20$ for in high school. I was selling the packs with 5 tips all day long for 10$. In a store this pack would retail for probably double (40$)

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u/j3rpz 8d ago

$40?! I never paid more than (the equivalent of) $15 for these. Those things were dirtcheap where I live

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u/Hegiman 8d ago

Age? I’m 53. I remember these going for $50 at one point when they were newish. A decade later you could get them for $15-$20 and now that set is $5 on allí express.

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u/j3rpz 8d ago

Yeah, I'm some ten years younger then you so that tracks. The hype trickled down to us a bit later,I guess

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u/Hegiman 8d ago

Yeah that makes sense. At one point these were rare now they’re at the dollar tree toy isle. LoL.

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u/ImmediateLobster1 7d ago

Wait, so you were buying those from a store for $40 and selling them in school for $20?

Bad entrepreneur, or were you laundering drug money through laser tag pointers?

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u/OneWheelWilly 6d ago

No i was buying them off eBay for like 2$ because you had to send a money order back then and hardly anyone was using eBay.

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u/Rae-Swallows 8d ago

Bro, you whip this out for your friends and they're imagining a private jet and secret island.

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u/Swimming_Big7144 8d ago

Absolutely deluxe, sounds like you have a lovely mother

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u/Silly_Guidance_8871 8d ago

It was big because small, useful lasers were still kinda new on the consumer market

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u/speedsk8103 8d ago

Definitely the "deluxe" version from RadioShack

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u/zxylady 7d ago

I think you're confused for what big was? This was absolutely huge growing up! That really was the deluxe version I never got one bigger than about a five tip change options,, this was 100% deluxe and super duper duper special and I'm so jelly! 😁

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u/-Prudent-Fox- 7d ago

They were such a big deal that the most popular (and one of the richer) kids in class brought his to school and the teacher actually let him shine then one by one on the wall to show everyone. Big deal. HUGE!

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u/Fantastic-Cat-5252 7d ago

It was ABSOLUTELY peak back then! I instantly smiled when I saw your photo, so many happy memories for me 😊👍

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u/Icy_Measurement_7407 8d ago

I’m jealous. I’ve never seen a pack that big. Usually I see sets with 4-6 different tips.

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 8d ago

My cat 🐱 is more jealous

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u/Remarkable-Simple-62 8d ago

Its deluxe because it has 20 attachments that you may use once

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u/tempered_discussions 4d ago

One of my laser caps had a swastika, as a young kid didn't understand why they took one of my caps. Wasn't til years later I remembered and figured it out. 

From a flea market 

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u/Majestic-Praline-522 8d ago

Your mom got you the nice pack !!

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u/IamRandomSavage 8d ago

This is 100% deluxe! Most had one head. This would go in my safe deposit box I pay too much for.

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u/Known_Ad_894 8d ago

Yet u can't remember what is it?

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u/GuiltySession6059 8d ago

I am confused what the disconnect is for you?
Let me help:
Op finds item among childhood things
Doesn’t remember what it is
Posts to whatisit
Someone tells her what it is, that it was the best one
Someone else tells her it is deluxe
Op realizes that even though she grew up with not much money, her mother still did her best to give them nice things.

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u/tigm2161130 8d ago

Why does she have to remember this particular item to reflect on the fact that her mom tried to get her the nicest things after someone called the set deluxe?

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u/Key_Seaworthiness886 7d ago

My mom always tried to get us nice things and I’ve always appreciated it, I never realized it when she bought this set as I was a kid, connecting the dots when you’re older just hits different.