Cap Gun

When I was young, there were these cap guns going around. These little guns uses those small gunpowder dots laid on a roll of red paper. And when you use a hammer or any other object on these little dots, you will either get a small spark or a loud bang, depending on how good your eye-hand coordination was. But whatever it was, the smell of those gunpowder was heaven. There were a few guns that were quite big and carrying one makes you really feel like James Bond or some super agent. But the more common ones are those little blank Derringer types. I hated those because in the heat of the moment, you can get your fingers hit by the hammer or worse, get burnt from the sparks. And at the end of the day, what you have is a gun filled with gundpowder explosions and rusting metal parts (due to the explosions, la).

Those were the fun days and nowadays, all the toys that came out were more passive and full of electronics. So, I guessed those were the childhood years I can never get back. It was not until yesterday when I was in Port Dickson that I came across them again.

Although the plastic is now in bright fluorescent orange, the basic design of the gun is still there. Most of the parts are plastic too, especially the moving parts.

So, for RM2.00 you get a small gun, with 6 spools
of gunpowder

Pull the small lever and the inner chamber flips
out. Its quite an ingenius design as once you
pull the trigger, the hammer will hit the
paper and on the next trigger pull, a
plastic piece will roll the paper up for
a fresh new gunpowder

The trigger takes some force to pull. The hammer and
the opposite side has metal parts for you to hit the
gunpowder effectively.

But secretly, I wanted this more than those guns.
This is a rocket where you have a spring tip at the
top and the hammer at the other end. You just
slip the roll of red paper with the gunpowder spot
under the hammer and then toss it. When it falls
and hits the ground, the impact of the force would
transfer to the hammer and then to the gundpowder
Many afternoons I spent picking it up and tossing it.
Then again, that's me because I like being alone