The metal ones - were a common pocket-money
thing; on the way home from school, pop-in to the village for milk and
Chelsea-buns, receive a quick issue of pocket-money (6d) and grab a cap-bomb
from Webb's the Newsagents! The
commonest design was the one second from the left. I vaguely recall they came
in some of the less reverent Christmas crackers as well?
The one on the far left is a modern one, sourced
in Taiwan, which I grabbed with a newspaper (at the same time as-, not a
freebie from the publisher!) a few years ago - Henbrandt, Play Write, someone
like that?
Reading to the right, the middle one is a
more ornate version of the common design (unfortunately with broken tail fins)
which I suspect is earlier (1950's), while above them is an alternate head for
which I have no body, so I don't know how it differed from the other two?
Another variation is the little cockpit sculpted on one side (of the second one) to make it a 'plane
rather than a rocket/bomb
12th May - Duh! Missed the actual bomb! Some of you will have known it as the cap-firing cargo from the Dinky Toys die-cast Junker's 87 'Stuka', dive-bomber! If you didn't recognise it . . . that's what it is, utilising the mechanism of the Britains shell . . . I had meant to say as I segued seamlessly to the next paragraph!
12th May - Duh! Missed the actual bomb! Some of you will have known it as the cap-firing cargo from the Dinky Toys die-cast Junker's 87 'Stuka', dive-bomber! If you didn't recognise it . . . that's what it is, utilising the mechanism of the Britains shell . . . I had meant to say as I segued seamlessly to the next paragraph!
Second from the right is the Britains shell from the big howitzer,
which uses the same low-tech, to provide a satisfying crack upon landing among
the enemy lines. The final item seems to be some kind of anvil for similar
ammunition; it came with a load of plastic and metal shells and bombs, but I
don't know anything else about it and it could as easily be a crude milk-churn
or a washing-machine component!
The plastic ones - I've only ever seen one
of the ornate ones on the left so it was lucky I was there to see it and buy
it, or did someone donate it? But somewhere, sometime, there were shop-stock
boxes full of them, probably in three or four colors!
The blue one is a common-ish design, still
around, but not so common with the brass (or more likely phospher-bronze) anvil
on the nose. The yellow chap with an orange nose is South American, and clearly
comes with the instruction to evacuate capsule before detonation!
The final pair are the common
'pocket-money' bombs of my childhood, they came in various sizes, and vaguely
equate to WWI (blue nose) and WWII (red nose) 'standard' bomb shapes.
The carded ones - The Argentine version
comes with an atmospheric card, suggesting it's about to land next to the 'Spacex' equipment in the crater
(strangely - or; ironically - the old sci-fi landing system is now being employed
by Musk's reusable launch-vehicles!), while to its right a card with both
common designs in two sizes.
In the right hand image three littlies in a
small header-carded bag; they're not 'triple-shot', but rather a trio (or triplet!)
of single-shots; pedantry - I know!
They sit next to a very different beast - if
you really want to "have an eye out",
a good way to go about it is with a projectile of high-impact polyethylene,
fired under a jet of air-pressure!
It's basically a hand-held pop-gun in the
shape of a rocket-bomb! A wooden piston is pulled-back and thrust forward,
forcing the red-end to fly off, at speed, with a pop-sound! I have a couple of
khaki-plastic nose-cones in one of the 'odds bags', similar but not quite the
same, which may be off an 'army' version of this toy.
This one is a bit of a mystery - clearly
it's styled in a rocket-bomb fashion, but the firing pin is at the 'blunt' back
and has no spring, plate or anvil, while the hole in the blue plastic cap suggests
that this was somehow fired from a larger object (space gun?).
The paper cap being placed between the
flat-end of the pin and the hole in the cap, fired by a trigger-pin in the
missing object, through the hole? At the same time it was - presumably - shot-off,
as a rocket, to land quietly? Anyone recognise it?
Ammo - The early ones were the 'Standard'
caps as mentioned on the carded set above, pretty-much predating my childhood,
there were still a few around, but with the coming of realistic feed-mechanisms
in the die-cast output of people like the UK's Lone Star or Crescent , Rendondo 'pam-pam's from Spain and
Italy's Edison the caps were placed
on reels, and you had to carefully tare one off to place it in an older weapon,
or single-shot toy such as these rockets/bombs.
By the 1980's it was mostly the plastic
caps either in daisy-wheels as above or in strips as here, both of
which are still around, although they could be used with some of the older
bombs, by placing them over the tips of the firing-pins, the pin needing to be
of a gauge which fitted tightly-enough to hold the cap in 'flight'!
You can also stack the paper ones for a
bigger bang, but even as kids we quickly learnt that too many and they cushioned
each-other and failed to go off (or flew, unburnt, out the side like confetti),
while more than three tended to do damage to the more delicate bits (the two
posts between nose and neck of the head-piece), ruining your new toy!
This post shows one of the other cap-bombs in the collection,
I think there may be a couple of others with that one, but I haven't got round
to combining them with the garage lot (this post) yet, so - another visit in a
year or two? It also shows a Hong Kong version of yesterday's rocket launchers.
9 comments:
I'm guessing nobody makes those ammo strips anymore... A pity.
I wouldn't like to say no offhand, as they may, somewhere, but I think I've only seen the plastic ones - occasionally - these days . . . 'elf'n'safety mate!
H
Remember making home made ones. Two bolts, one nut and swan vesta match heads. Part screw one bolt in to the nut, half fill the cavity with the match heads, carefully screw in second bolt. Throw at or on to hard surface. Probably classed as an IED now!
I recounted a tale of similar ner-do-wellness a while ago Chris;
https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/09/r-is-for-return-to-nazi-flats.html
We enhanced ours with black-powder and nearly killed my Brother! But the bolts were the kind of thing you attach replacement tines to a chisel-harrow with!
Definitely 'Improvised', undoubtedly 'Explosive' and clearly 'Devices', I think the law would not struggle to convict these days!
H
EY - You can bulk-buy them from Amazon, in hundreds (of shots) or thousands!
H
I guess you can pretty much find anything on Amazon. The paper strip type says they don't work on the old cap guns though.
They may be thicker strips EY? I seem to recall the later red-paper ones used to foul at the edges as they were broader paper? You'd have to unroll it, carefully cut a millimeter or two off the whole roll and then wind it up again!
H
Love your long detailed posts Hugh! I don't know how you do it! I can only manage quick burst posts! Anyways, I love the Cohete Lunar by Uniplast. Its indeed a small world that you mention Spacexy type vehicles in the crater on the card art. The rocket illustration itself is a Tri-ang SpaceX toy design for their Nova rocket, which I adored as a nipper. The artwork is actually lifted from Ed Valigursky's spacecraft in a Time Life book from the Sixties, Man in Space.
Cheers Woodsy! I think we may have had the book as kids, was it the one with the little blue/red/yellow bars in one corner of the cover or were they the Tell Me How's . . . Golden Wonder book Of....? There were lots of good books back in the day, but the ones which have aged worst are the dinosaur books, nearly everything in them is now obsolete! Dates, names, physiognomy, genus-group-family . . . . !
H
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