Remember the pop cap gun toys that we used to play with as a kid? I
found one of them at a friend’s shop yesterday and decided to go for a
trip down nostalgia lane. The toy is named Super Cap Gun with Real Bullet Shooting Action and it retails for just a couple of dollars.
The contents of the package consist of a pink revolver type handgun
with a container full of plastic bullets. The firing caps are not
included so I got a couple of kids that were hanging around to go buy
some for me at a shop nearby and told them to keep the change.
They came back with a stack of the 72 shot packets containing 8 shot
plastic disc caps. I remember these things fondly from my childhood
days, when I used to shoot my sister with these pop cap guns. I
probably triggered some massive synapse linkage coz she’s now
practicing medicine at Christchurch Hospital and I’m here in Kuching
doing…fuck all? 😉
Anyway, the shot caps are detachable from a large sheet of
prefabricated 8-shot firing caps. You’ll notice that some of the caps
do not have a proper amount of gunpowder (or whatever they use in these
things to propel the bullets)…it’s made in China, no quality control,
so there you go. In fact, some of the shot cap rounds do not have any
firing chemical at all…
Well, back to the pop cap gun, the front of the gun has a release
mechanism that allows the revolver load to be detached. The back of the
canister has metal studs embedded into it to allow the firing pin to
hit the metal studs against the shot caps (the opposite action of real
handguns) and the front has loading bays for the plastic bullets
included in the package.
The loading of the plastic toy gun is done by manually inserting the
white plastic bullets into the chambers. There are 8 chambers, the
standard size in toy guns that uses the 8-shot firing caps. The first
time I loaded the pop cap gun, I didn’t push the “bullets” in fully,
which resulted in less-than-stellar discharges.
I later found out that pushing in the plastic bullets until
they come into contact with the back metal studs resulted in a much
more satisfactory discharge, in terms of distance and power. The
picture above shows the correct load of this plastic pop cap gun.
The firing cap is put above the metal studs at the back of the plastic revolver…
…and the canister is put back into the gun frame. Lock and load! 😉
Download: Pop gun firing action [sixthseal.com]
Here’s a video of me playing with the pop cap gun at my friend’s
store. I used my hand as a target, just to see if it hurts. It doesn’t.
It gives you welts where the plastic bullets come into contact with your skin though…
This is what the firing cap looks like when it’s spent.
The pop can gun has visible residue in the chamber after its being
fired for a couple of times…it’s made in China, it’s not supposed to
last. :p
Hands up! Or I’ll give you welts! 😉
