I discovered as a kid around 1970 that submerging a cherry bomb in water does not put out the fuse. The problem, however, was that the water was contained in a pot in the kitchen sink. I was teasing my brother by waving a lit match over the fuse, and, yeah. I threw it in the pot and pushed it down once or twice with my hand. Well, it blasted the water all over the kitchen walls and ceiling, dented the bottom of the pot, and destroyed the sink. Yeah, my Dad was pissed.
Reminds me of the time when I had some firecrackers but no matches. So tried to use the toaster in the oven to light them then run outside to throw them. It did not work well :)
In the 1950's in the old Polish neighborhood on the East Side of Detroit, there were two bachelor brothers who always celebrated the fourth of July in a unique way: They came back to Michigan from a pilgrimage to Tennessee with a 25# shopping bag full of cherry bombs. On the 4th, they would take turns: one brother would put a cherry bomb in the sling of a Wrist Rocket slingshot, and pull it all the way back. The other brother would then light the fuse using a cigarette. The first brother would aim high in the sky and the whole neighborhood could watch an arc of sparks from the fuse followed by a flash and a blast that rattled the window glass in their frames. This method literally gave the biggest 'bang for the buck.' Our neighborhood near City Airport sounded like a war zone. Too Cool!
I heard stories about kids in high school flushing cherry B's down the toilet, and causing all kinds of problems. (but I don't know if it really happened)
@@rorschachspeaks470it was a big urban legend in the 80s when I was in high school but I don’t know if anyone ever really did it … we had a crazy babysitter who would drive us down to china town and we’d buy enough M80s to fill this crappy old briefcase … I never flushed one and I never knew anyone who lost a hand or anything, although that def did happen to ppl, but my Uncle Sam put one next to a beer can and didn’t get clear fast enough and he got aluminum can shrapnel in his shin that bleed pretty good but we didn’t take him to the hospital or anything … anyway, loved M80s
Those are from my childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s. One day we detonated an M-80 under a block of wood. It shot up higher than we could see and never saw it come down. Could be orbiting the Earth to this day as far as we're concerned. I'd like to think that.
Lol, in the early 90s we would have to give the stand tender a 20 dollar bill to see the better fireworks away from the public. Good times. Fireworks are extremely dangerous I don't recommend doing this but we were reckless.
Hehehh, the real way to get the echo is to light one off when you and your friends are under an overpass tunnel. you've never heard such a reverb..... it's like BBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr
My dad used to get m80s, half sticks, pineapples, and use a cigarette as a timer on the fuse. He'd sit down and watch TV, and 5 minutes later the house would shake and he would laugh like hell. Good times.
😂 when I was a kid we put an m80 in someones tailpipe and put a cigarette at end of the fuse and hid the owner came running out after the explosion! We laughed our butts off! That was about 50 years ago. I feel like a heel now.
When I was 7, in 1972, I stole what I thought was a smoke bomb off my father’s dresser top. I lit it in a field and covered it up with an old rusty TV tray someone had discarded in the field. When it exploded it scared the crap out of me and I got some shrapnel in my arm. I’m damn lucky I have my eyesight and all my fingers!
Glad the fuses were high quality and not the occasional super fast one like you get with Black Cat firecrackers. They caused many a numb and blistered finger. An M-80 would blow your hand into hamburger.
@@MrTruckerfI had a quick-fuse firecracker go off in my hand. It was common place to light them and throw them. After that, it was light them on the ground and step back.
yea, the new ones are literally ladyfingers inside a cardboard tube with plaster/clay around it, worst part is that for the most part, it makes them less loud than their cheaper & smaller counterpart.
@@seanlikes79 Ever since the Child Protection Act of 1966 passed and 911 happened, the ATF banned the general sale of high explosives to law abiding citizens (yes, you could buy sticks of dynamite at your local hardware back then) and also adding a composition weight limit for most fireworks, therefore firecrackers were limited to 50mg per cracker, the sale of m-95's, m-5000's and other modern m-# crackers are really just for marketing purposes, basically selling less of the same weak firecrackers for more money, so avoid buying m-# firecrackers at the fireworks store, as for the normal ball shell fireworks, they were regulated to 1.75" max for consumer fireworks 1.4G and bigger ball shells are now considered Display Fireworks 1.3G for shells 3" & up and requires a professional fireworks license to buy and store them
I remember back in the mid 80’s . My brother and I would put the M-80 wick into a lit 🔥 cigarette in the field behind our house . Go back into the house and wait for it to go off. Then come out with the other neighbors and wonder what the heck that was. 😂😂👍👍🇺🇸🇺🇸😎😎🧨🧨💣💣
I've never seen the middle one, but we had M80s and Cherry Bombs when I was growing up. We also had lots of fun with penny rockets. We were dumb enough to have firework wars with penny rockets and Roman candles. Luckily all we did was start grass fires. But once, we started a grass fire at the base of a butane tank with a leak.
I remember as a kid driving from Michigan to Pennsylvania to visit relatives and my dad liked to stop at the fireworks stands in Ohio to pick up several boxes of the old M-80s in the sixties. He loved lighting those things off.
@@jacobsrandomvideochannel4586 The small firecrackers back then consisted of silver-colored powder rolled tightly in Chinese newspaper. We used to unroll them and pretend we were reading the print in our Chinese accents. They were fairly powerful, also.
Took one of those BIG green 1/4 sticks one night lit it threw it down a civil war cannon barrel, stuffed an old soft ball in behind it. When it went off it launched the ball at least 2 football field lengths. Fun times back then.......
They were all outlawed by the time I was a kid. We used to unravel firecrackers and collect all the flash powder to make our own. It took a lot of unravelling to get any decent quantity. Amazing that more people did not loose their hands back in the day.
They did lose their fingers/hands/etc. which is why they were outlawed...but they were still fun as hell. Too bad you can't outlaw stupid, 'cause if you could we'd still have them.
@TonyFrickey-ur9jy Lol, back then in 2016 I'd run away from lit firecrackers, but they were just the small consumer-grade individual ladyfingers (those firecrackers were quite weak now thinking about it), when I lit my first 0.3g firecracker in 2020, that's when I figured out what Explosive Power was, the shockwave from that 0.3g firecracker hit me in the chest from 5 feet away and made a very loud bang that could be mistaken for handgun fire, that's how I got into bigger firecrackers and got comfortable with small consumer firecrackers. Kinda miss the adrenaline you get from lighting your first hi-powered firecracker
That was an old school M-80 with plaster ends ... those plaster chunks become projectiles and hurt like hell ...Got hit 3 times in the back in sequence and it made me drop to my knees! In 2009 i got ahold of 20 M-1000s set me back a hundred bucks....the first one I lit and threw it down into a riverbed ..we were standing on a bridge about 15 feet above 4 of us ...when it exploded it almost blew our baseball caps off our heads! BOOM! they were 3 inches long and black with wax ends! Thanks for sharing! Eric Underwood Class of 81 Downey High School, California USA ♥️🇺🇲🙏🗽🦅
@@user-xh8ii2hj6rmy pops once put a bunch of m80s down the school toilet back in the 60s and blew the pipeline 😂 got a hold of a couple of those old m80s when my gramps passed things are crazy
Oh yeah, I do have a pyrobilla book which does show what large firecrackers they had back then, even original flash recipes and firecracker specifications, seen 5 inch firecrackers with a diameter of at least 5/8th to 3/4 of an inch in diameter in the book
@FullmoonEffects89 Same, new ones just lack that chest-thumping shockwave, still gotta find a way to buy overloaded firecrackers like Angry Elfs and 9mm firecrackers
Once had what I was told was a quarter-stick. About 1.25" in diameter and 3" long. Fused like an M-80. Took it up to a friend's farm on the 4th back around the turn of the century. Added fuse so we could get far enough away. I'm glad we did.
This guy used to bring those in many years ago . loved the M80s. he had a limited amount of M500s . they were something else. always respect those things . had lots of safe fun back in the day .
CRAZIEST THING I EVER HAD, SIMULATION GRENADES.. WHITE CARDBOARD, ABOUT THE SIDE OF A 12 OZ SODA CAN.. HAD A ROPE PULL ON THE END OF IT... YOU PULLED THE ROPE, AND THREW IT... WHENEVER ONE OF THOSE WENT OFF, POLICE AND FIRE DEPT ALWAYS RESPONDED.. IT DID NOT SOUND LIKE FIREWORKS.. HAHAH THOSE THINGS WERE CRAZY..
BOUGHT M80s WHOLESALE IN THE EARLY 1980'S. 1O GROSS TO A BOX.. THEY CAME IN A LONG SHORT SIDED PLAIN BROWN CARDBOARD BOX WITH 5 GROSS ON EACH SIDE OF THE BOX. EACH BROWN PAPER BAG CONTAINED A GROSS..(144) THEY WERE 30 DOLLARS PER GROSS...
Back in the day when I was a kid, I was up in a tree tossing M-80s down. I tried to light my last one and dropped the matches after (I thought) unsuccessfully trying to light it. After retrieving the matches and climbing back up, I got set to light the thing. To my shock, the fuse had dissapeared and I reflexively threw it away. It was out of my hand about a foot or two when it went off, and my hand was numb for a while, but I stll had my fingers, which came in handy as a precision toolmaker/grinder hand in the electronic connector industry from which I just retired.
A couple of years ago I bought a vintage candy tin at an estate sale. After prying it open I was pleased to find it was loaded with old "two inchers." They still worked fine!
As a kid in the Bronx, I remember we used to stick firecrackers in fresh dog shit, with just the fuse sticking out. If you didn't run fast enough, your t-shirt would be filled with brown smelling specs, just liked the parked cars. Ah, good times. Thanks for the memories.
Grew up in the Midwest. The state we lived in didn't allow the good stuff. So, Dad would drive us down to Missouri to load up. This would have been 1967 and 68. Dad dropped a hundred on fireworks. We light them off for days. Loved the Blackcats. Loved the packaging. Even then I think the M80's were 50 cents a piece. I think maybe he only bought like 10 or 20 dollars worth. Those things were no joke.
Those were the great days of fireworks. At a young age I taught myself to make flash powder and started recreating Big firecrackers. Bigger than M80's. Pretty soon you keep building bigger and bigger bombs. Finally, I decided to stop because the consequences if something went wrong would be life altering in a very bad way. M80's were the perfect size salute. My neighbor was the sheriff and he confiscated some Seal bombs from kids that were blowing up people's mail boxes ! He gave them to me for the 4th cuz he figured I could handle them. They were definitely powerful. All this livefor fireworks eventually led to me getting my Pyrotechnicians license and I fired Pro 1.3g shows for a couple years. It was alot of fun. Fireworks get in your blood. Great video on old school big firecrackers !!
in th e70's when we lit off an M-80's leaves fell from the near by trees... :) made a few home made works.. with match heads then put it in a full vacuum cleaner bag for that added FX
Back in '70 my dad's college friend in Colorado we visited, showed us how to do the 4th. They lived up 13 Mile Road. He lobbed full sticks off the cliff into the canyon. Good times.
@checkmatekingtwothisiswhit7685 Same dude, it would be nice to be able to find M-80s for sale in your local fireworks store but these bureaucrats are outta control, they could've just added a age limit of being 13-16ish and up in order to purchase M-80's instead of completely banning great American firecrackers since the child protection act started the ban of these awesome devices, the age limit rule would just be like poland with its age limits on different classes (power levels) of firecrackers
Back in the 1960's, my folks were going to my Grandmother's place out of state. We stopped at a Roadside park for a break. On my way back to the car, I spotted a box next to a tree. I walked over and looked inside and it was 70% full of M80's. It was a gross size box so I figured there were 100 left. Wow, I picked them up and finished the trip. We sure had a good time at Grandma's that Summer:) !!
Was raining one night, my brother and I took 2 M-80 and twisted the fuses together. Placed them on the wet pavement and OMG ! It shook the windows of the house and there was about a 12" circle of the wet street that was completly dry ! This was in the late 1960's when you could get the good stuff.
@MrTruckerf It's a distinct possibility that you could get sympathetic explosion. The powders in cherry bombs and m80s are not black powder and hence were sensitive enough to shock that that could have happened. Due largely to the use of perchlorates as oxidizer.
Back in 1970, (in Michigan) a friend of mine lit an M-80 and accidentally dropped it in the mud next to his boot. Although he tried to get away? To this day, he's walking about without a couple of his toes. I knew a couple other guys who were 'young chemists' and would make their own plastic explosives. They packed the stuff in 'Pringles' cans or some other cardboard tube, and would either make a detonator or use an M-80 with a greatly extended fuse to set it off. One day in the dead of winter, we all went up north to a lake, and used an ice auger to drill a hole for each one. While one of us would be standing back with a camera, another one would light it and shove it down the hole under the ice. The fountain of ice pieces would shoot *WAY* up in the sky, making for a great picture. When done, the bubbling hole of ice pieces and mud must have been 30 feet across! Someplace I still have those pictures!
I use to throw m80s like popits. I had a way to pack them that’d double the parameter of the bald patch in the grass. My buds & I caused so much fun back in the day. 🤣
The good ole days ! Then there were the Blockbusters and Pineapples. In the 80's it was as easy as a drive to Chinatown (NYC) or a connection to someone even distantly associated with the mob. It was everywhere.
Buddy and I were into chemistry sets. Wanted to make gun powder. Had it all but potassium nitrate…. Salt Peter. Ordered some and picked it up at the train station. Got the mix with the other ingredients just right. Filled a ping pong ball to the brim. Stuffed a fuse we bought from a comic book in the fill hole and cork around it to seal it good. Put it in my back yard and secretly lit the fuze so my parents wouldn’t know. The explosion and flash was incredible and the echo resounded in the distance forever. 😂 I think everyone in town came outside to see what blew up. Good times!
I never messed with these much when I was a kid. I now live in a place that has terrible snow drifts. I wish I could find some that have longer fuses and that I could use to break up snow drifts.
Yep, ashcans. They were slightly smaller than M-80s, and had some printing around them as well. Nothing beat the M-80s, except blockbusters. The older kids had those.
We had silver ones that we called 'Silver Salutes'. They were definitely in the M-80 to Cherry Bomb power range. Haven't seen any for over 50 years. Maybe even 60 years. I am 72 so I grew up in the Golden Age of illegal fireworks.
Back in the 60s, we lit em and threw them OR set them under an aluminum Folgers coffee can. THAT threw shrapnel all over the place. An M-80 would also blow up a mail box of you thew it in and shut the box door. Man those were the days,
I put an m-80 under an empty coffee can once and the can didn't move a bit. Then about 20 or 30 seconds later the bottom of the can came floating down. Glad it went straight up instead of hitting me.
The biggest thing I got a hold of in the mid-'80s were M-60s. They were built the same as an M-80 just a little smaller. My dad was a truck driver and would bring interesting fireworks home from his trips. I cut one open to find out what was inside. The tube was filled with sawdust and the fuse went into a small capsule, similar in size and looks to over the counter pain relief medications. I didn't try opening up the capsule.
used to "fish" with the m-80s we were supposed to be working cleaning up a little beach front park we would take a 3/4 nut around the m-80 and throw it in an area with a lot of minnows.
We used to plant C-bombs and M 80’s in the lawns of old crouchey folk in our neighborhood,and light a cigarette, stick it on the fuse and just walk away very quietly, we’d sit down half a block away and wait for the “fireworks “ . good times
I was still able to get my hands on these as late as maybe 1980 by driving through the Holland Tunnel to Chinatown (NY). The street hawkers would be out there, they would hop into the back seat of the car and take you to some obscure, nondescript, shady apartment, devoid of furniture, where there would be open boxes of goodies. Cash only, thank you.
Me and my friend lived in a trailer park growing up and we got our hands on a couple of quarter sticks and decided to light them both up at 3 in the morning and the echo and blast it made because of the aluminum trailers was f**king crazy 🤣
I don't know about the other two but I cut open an M80 about 30 years ago. There was a small plastic capsule in there maybe twice the size of a Tylenol capsule, that was the charge. I was a bit surprised at the inside, very loud though.
Back in the early 60s Cherry Bombs were 25 cents. You could go into any bait shop and find them on the counter top in a carton. Plus there was always some guy selling M80s out of his trunk, and if you were lucky a 1/4 stick. Not for 25 cents though. Remember a slingshot called a wrist rocket? It was a piece of metal shaped to fit around your wrist with a handle. You needed a friend to help you do this, but I would load an M80 in the sling. Pull it back as far as I could. Have my friend light the fuse and shoot it straight up. By the time the M80 reached 60 or 70 feet in the air it would go off. KA-BOOM! It was a lot more fun being a kid back then.
That brought back my childhood I just called my son over and showed him Told him how we would fill up a 2 liter bottle with gas and an m80 would fit perfect in the top it blow a 20’ ball of fire in the air now that was fun 😂
I used to make my own cherry bombs when you couldn’t get cherry bombs anymore. I’d hollow out a smoke bomb and stuff them with as much firecracker powder as I could. Usually 20-40 firecrackers. This was 40 years ago when they had a lot in them. Put a drop of glue in the hole you hollowed out the smoke bomb then take small strips of duct tape and wrap it til it’s about 1.5-2 inches in size. There you go.
By law, a small firecrackers can contain a maximum of 50 mg of flash powder. So 10 or 20 of them would be 0.5g and 1.0 g respectively. So that was a respectable amount of flash powder powder and provide a satisfying boom. As you likely noted, the powder is not black powder at all. It's similar but the oxidizer is different as well as the presence of aluminum dust. That's why they call them flashlight crackers because they are brighter due to the aluminum dust which provides bright white Flash. And because it's also Burns at a higher speed it makes a sharper report than black powder. providing
We used to take an empty bubble container, fill it with lighter fluid, put a hole in the lid and push a cherry bomb fuse through the hole. Then, we would put a lit cigarette on the fuse so we could get away far enough and watch what would happen. A fireball about 20 feet in the air. Ah, good times😂
I was raised in the 1960s, when M-80s had the same cachet as the Jaguar XK-E and the Luger pistol. You could always tell the kids who played with M-80s: They were missing a tip of a finger or something.
Remember stores stocked with firecrackers at Halloween like others do with candy year-round. Little Ladyfingers, Atoms,....big red packages like bricks.
Got a scar above my upper lip from an M80 blast in an aluminum can. With the 7 second timed fuses, they were great for throwing off the balcony at concerts.
I discovered as a kid around 1970 that submerging a cherry bomb in water does not put out the fuse. The problem, however, was that the water was contained in a pot in the kitchen sink. I was teasing my brother by waving a lit match over the fuse, and, yeah. I threw it in the pot and pushed it down once or twice with my hand. Well, it blasted the water all over the kitchen walls and ceiling, dented the bottom of the pot, and destroyed the sink. Yeah, my Dad was pissed.
Did the same thing. My Mom was not happy…….
We flushed them down the toilet of the school lavatories.
@@user-xd8dk5se2u I’m Canadian, firecrackers are banned here as well. However, people do bring them up from the US.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Reminds me of the time when I had some firecrackers but no matches. So tried to use the toaster in the oven to light them then run outside to throw them. It did not work well :)
In the 1950's in the old Polish neighborhood on the East Side of Detroit, there were two bachelor brothers who always celebrated the fourth of July in a unique way: They came back to Michigan from a pilgrimage to Tennessee with a 25# shopping bag full of cherry bombs. On the 4th, they would take turns: one brother would put a cherry bomb in the sling of a Wrist Rocket slingshot, and pull it all the way back. The other brother would then light the fuse using a cigarette. The first brother would aim high in the sky and the whole neighborhood could watch an arc of sparks from the fuse followed by a flash and a blast that rattled the window glass in their frames. This method literally gave the biggest 'bang for the buck.' Our neighborhood near City Airport sounded like a war zone. Too Cool!
Thanks for the idea!
Awesome video! When we were kids M-80's were the stuff of legend. A legend of blown-off hands!
I heard stories about kids in high school flushing cherry B's down the toilet, and causing all kinds of problems. (but I don't know if it really happened)
@@rorschachspeaks470it was a big urban legend in the 80s when I was in high school but I don’t know if anyone ever really did it … we had a crazy babysitter who would drive us down to china town and we’d buy enough M80s to fill this crappy old briefcase … I never flushed one and I never knew anyone who lost a hand or anything, although that def did happen to ppl, but my Uncle Sam put one next to a beer can and didn’t get clear fast enough and he got aluminum can shrapnel in his shin that bleed pretty good but we didn’t take him to the hospital or anything … anyway, loved M80s
Those are from my childhood in the 1950s and early 1960s. One day we detonated an M-80 under a block of wood. It shot up higher than we could see and never saw it come down. Could be orbiting the Earth to this day as far as we're concerned. I'd like to think that.
Lol, in the early 90s we would have to give the stand tender a 20 dollar bill to see the better fireworks away from the public.
Good times. Fireworks are extremely dangerous I don't recommend doing this but we were reckless.
Nope, it landed in my background last month. You can still see the charring from the explosion.
@@davidholman48 Lol nice!
Wow
I killed a duck with a splinter in his ass.... always wonder how it got there.
You always know when an M-80 goes off. The way that they echo.
@@johnorlitta Yep, Big Ole echo to scare the neighbors lol
Hehehh, the real way to get the echo is to light one off when you and your friends are under an overpass tunnel. you've never heard such a reverb..... it's like BBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr
Up in Boston the M80 was called a Block Buster.
We called those M1000s. Literally a 1/4 stick of dynamite. It sends shock waves through the air and sets off car alarms.
@@thedirtybubble9613 A M-1000 is 1000 grains of flash powder. A M-80 is 80 grains. No comparison.
My dad used to get m80s, half sticks, pineapples, and use a cigarette as a timer on the fuse. He'd sit down and watch TV, and 5 minutes later the house would shake and he would laugh like hell. Good times.
And here I thought I invented using a lit cigarette as a time delay fuse! Smart man your dad. Great minds think alike.
@@edpoole6700 the improvised munitions manual also used that as a time delay
😂 when I was a kid we put an m80 in someones tailpipe and put a cigarette at end of the fuse and hid the owner came running out after the explosion! We laughed our butts off! That was about 50 years ago. I feel like a heel now.
Used to put m80 under old metal garbage cans..put them about 6 feet in the air
Old school.
I was in high school in the early 70s and actually witnessed a toilet get destroyed by a Cherry Bomb . Ahh , the good ole days .
Lane Tech in Chicago somebody was always flushing a cherry bomb down the toilet
When I was 7, in 1972, I stole what I thought was a smoke bomb off my father’s dresser top. I lit it in a field and covered it up with an old rusty TV tray someone had discarded in the field. When it exploded it scared the crap out of me and I got some shrapnel in my arm. I’m damn lucky I have my eyesight and all my fingers!
Damn, glad you're okay👍
We used to shoot M-80's with our wrist rockets.
Heck yeah!!
Glad the fuses were high quality and not the occasional super fast one like you get with Black Cat firecrackers. They caused many a numb and blistered finger. An M-80 would blow your hand into hamburger.
@@MrTruckerfI had a quick-fuse firecracker go off in my hand. It was common place to light them and throw them. After that, it was light them on the ground and step back.
They weren’t as aerodynamic as cherry bombs. You could launch those a mile high.
I thought I was the only one dumb enough to do this.
The matches made this video nostalgic as FUH!! 🤣
Facts
Man I wish I could get my hands on some of those old m-80s. The new ones sound like ground snaps 😢🗑️
Ya I was disappointed with the new fireworks man..
yea, the new ones are literally ladyfingers inside a cardboard tube with plaster/clay around it, worst part is that for the most part, it makes them less loud than their cheaper & smaller counterpart.
@@seanlikes79 Ever since the Child Protection Act of 1966 passed and 911 happened, the ATF banned the general sale of high explosives to law abiding citizens (yes, you could buy sticks of dynamite at your local hardware back then) and also adding a composition weight limit for most fireworks, therefore firecrackers were limited to 50mg per cracker, the sale of m-95's, m-5000's and other modern m-# crackers are really just for marketing purposes, basically selling less of the same weak firecrackers for more money, so avoid buying m-# firecrackers at the fireworks store, as for the normal ball shell fireworks, they were regulated to 1.75" max for consumer fireworks 1.4G and bigger ball shells are now considered Display Fireworks 1.3G for shells 3" & up and requires a professional fireworks license to buy and store them
Come to California everyone sells them og ones with real flash
@@the.villa1nbro where?
I remember back in the mid 80’s . My brother and I would put the M-80 wick into a lit 🔥 cigarette in the field behind our house . Go back into the house and wait for it to go off. Then come out with the other neighbors and wonder what the heck that was. 😂😂👍👍🇺🇸🇺🇸😎😎🧨🧨💣💣
Haha 😂
I sure do miss those good ol days.
😆 lol, love the blending-in part with the neighbors, just like outta a cartoon or a show
"I heard it so I came out" -Dane Cook.
Fireworks history right here! Love it!
@armondtodd6969 Yup, too bad I didn't have any ground torpedos (Impact Cherry Bombs), those were also a fun & popular item in the 1920's
I've never seen the middle one, but we had M80s and Cherry Bombs when I was growing up. We also had lots of fun with penny rockets. We were dumb enough to have firework wars with penny rockets and Roman candles. Luckily all we did was start grass fires. But once, we started a grass fire at the base of a butane tank with a leak.
I remember as a kid driving from Michigan to Pennsylvania to visit relatives and my dad liked to stop at the fireworks stands in Ohio to pick up several boxes of the old M-80s in the sixties. He loved lighting those things off.
@martdod Awesome! Gotta love the M-80 stories back then. Too bad I was born way past the Era of Great American Firecrackers to experience the fun
@@jacobsrandomvideochannel4586 The small firecrackers back then consisted of silver-colored powder rolled tightly in Chinese newspaper. We used to unroll them and pretend we were reading the print in our Chinese accents. They were fairly powerful, also.
@@MrTruckerf I remember you! Is this Hung Far Low?😄
@@TonyRedunzo No, Ah Phuc Yoo.
Hung Far Low and Sum Ting Wong are my friends.
Took one of those BIG green 1/4 sticks one night lit it threw it down a civil war cannon barrel, stuffed an old soft ball in behind it.
When it went off it launched the ball at least 2 football field lengths.
Fun times back then.......
They were all outlawed by the time I was a kid. We used to unravel firecrackers and collect all the flash powder to make our own. It took a lot of unravelling to get any decent quantity.
Amazing that more people did not loose their hands back in the day.
They did lose their fingers/hands/etc. which is why they were outlawed...but they were still fun as hell. Too bad you can't outlaw stupid, 'cause if you could we'd still have them.
Lose
@@RealMTBAddict Yep, my bad. Thanks.
Nothing like being a kid, lighting one of those and running away as fast and far as you can. Thanks for the nostalgia.
@TonyFrickey-ur9jy Lol, back then in 2016 I'd run away from lit firecrackers, but they were just the small consumer-grade individual ladyfingers (those firecrackers were quite weak now thinking about it), when I lit my first 0.3g firecracker in 2020, that's when I figured out what Explosive Power was, the shockwave from that 0.3g firecracker hit me in the chest from 5 feet away and made a very loud bang that could be mistaken for handgun fire, that's how I got into bigger firecrackers and got comfortable with small consumer firecrackers. Kinda miss the adrenaline you get from lighting your first hi-powered firecracker
That was an old school M-80 with plaster ends ... those plaster chunks become projectiles and hurt like hell ...Got hit 3 times in the back in sequence and it made me drop to my knees!
In 2009 i got ahold of 20 M-1000s set me back a hundred bucks....the first one I lit and threw it down into a riverbed ..we were standing on a bridge about 15 feet above 4 of us ...when it exploded it almost blew our baseball caps off our heads!
BOOM! they were 3 inches long and black with wax ends!
Thanks for sharing!
Eric Underwood Class of 81 Downey High School, California USA ♥️🇺🇲🙏🗽🦅
@user-xh8ii2hj6r Damn, glad the end caps didn't do anything worse
Some people don’t even know but them high school years , Be the best years of a person life
@@MeekoBourous Because we were carefree and beautiful and had true friends... especially the last one ✌️
@@user-xh8ii2hj6rmy pops once put a bunch of m80s down the school toilet back in the 60s and blew the pipeline 😂 got a hold of a couple of those old m80s when my gramps passed things are crazy
i got nailed by one of those end caps and i had a welt on my chest for a month, ouch. lucky i didn't get it in the eye or the nuts.
Thank you sir for bringing back some great childhood memories. Things like these are what kept us from growing up soft like the kids of today
@TheCreedBratton No problem! 👍
And in some cases, prevented some people from ever playing the piano.
@@AStanton1966 Or receiving mail for a few days
So true, I’m from that era, we weren’t soft but some of us had to learn how to “choke their chicken”left handed.
@@rich546 😆
you know they used to sell half and quarter sticks of dynamite as fire crackers the good ol days
Oh yeah, I do have a pyrobilla book which does show what large firecrackers they had back then, even original flash recipes and firecracker specifications, seen 5 inch firecrackers with a diameter of at least 5/8th to 3/4 of an inch in diameter in the book
We would get the “blockbusters” they were gray and much bigger than the m80’s
Still do if you know where to get them. I do...I get quarter sticks all the time.
@@richreicher2679do tell where?
New shit only goes pop and bang. Miss the ones that goes boom!
@FullmoonEffects89 Same, new ones just lack that chest-thumping shockwave, still gotta find a way to buy overloaded firecrackers like Angry Elfs and 9mm firecrackers
Once had what I was told was a quarter-stick. About 1.25" in diameter and 3" long. Fused like an M-80. Took it up to a friend's farm on the 4th back around the turn of the century. Added fuse so we could get far enough away. I'm glad we did.
Placed an M-80 under an aluminum garbage can lid as a kid. Blew that thing straight up about 50'.
I got m80’s & cherry bombs sometimes when I was a kid around 1970-72. Both were badass! 💥💥
and these were available to kids in the seventies/eighties.... fun memories.
My neighbor had a box of M-80s, and it said on the M-80 and the box, " M-80 Simulated 50 cal Machine fire." Circa 1966 or so
@brucejohnson8521 Wow that is awesome! Military M-80s
M80s were always fun, good for clearing stopped up drains too
This guy used to bring those in many years ago . loved the M80s. he had a limited amount of M500s . they were something else. always respect those things . had lots of safe fun back in the day .
CRAZIEST THING I EVER HAD, SIMULATION GRENADES.. WHITE CARDBOARD, ABOUT THE SIDE OF A 12 OZ SODA CAN.. HAD A ROPE PULL ON THE END OF IT... YOU PULLED THE ROPE, AND THREW IT... WHENEVER ONE OF THOSE WENT OFF, POLICE AND FIRE DEPT ALWAYS RESPONDED.. IT DID NOT SOUND LIKE FIREWORKS.. HAHAH THOSE THINGS WERE CRAZY..
"damn, I felt that one" 😂
@@user-vr5kx7wl6z 🤣 Yup sure did, shook the hell-outta-me, shockwaves are fun lol
BOUGHT M80s WHOLESALE IN THE EARLY 1980'S. 1O GROSS TO A BOX.. THEY CAME IN A LONG SHORT SIDED PLAIN BROWN CARDBOARD BOX WITH 5 GROSS ON EACH SIDE OF THE BOX. EACH BROWN PAPER BAG CONTAINED A GROSS..(144) THEY WERE 30 DOLLARS PER GROSS...
Wow! Very interesting. Can you imagine if one of the boxes caught fire? 1,440 M-80s going off would wipe out a small town!
Back in the day when I was a kid, I was up in a tree tossing M-80s down.
I tried to light my last one and dropped the matches after (I thought) unsuccessfully trying to light it.
After retrieving the matches and climbing back up, I got set to light the thing.
To my shock, the fuse had dissapeared and I reflexively threw it away.
It was out of my hand about a foot or two when it went off, and my hand was numb for a while, but I stll had my fingers, which came in handy as a precision toolmaker/grinder hand in the electronic connector industry from which I just retired.
A couple of years ago I bought a vintage candy tin at an estate sale. After prying it open I was pleased to find it was loaded with old "two inchers." They still worked fine!
As a kid in the Bronx, I remember we used to stick firecrackers in fresh dog shit, with just the fuse sticking out. If you didn't run fast enough, your t-shirt would be filled with brown smelling specs, just liked the parked cars. Ah, good times. Thanks for the memories.
We did too! Like minds among kids :D
Us too. Only we used pop bottles.
Lol, I seen a video of someone doing that with cow shit, but he played chicken and got covered 😂
@@jacobsrandomvideochannel4586 LMAO. No a smart kid doesn't play chicken with it. Light it and run like hell! :)
I enjoy how quick you got to the point on each of these.
Grew up in the Midwest. The state we lived in didn't allow the good stuff. So, Dad would drive us down to Missouri to load up. This would have been 1967 and 68. Dad dropped a hundred on fireworks. We light them off for days. Loved the Blackcats. Loved the packaging. Even then I think the M80's were 50 cents a piece. I think maybe he only bought like 10 or 20 dollars worth. Those things were no joke.
Those were the great days of fireworks. At a young age I taught myself to make flash powder and started recreating Big firecrackers.
Bigger than M80's. Pretty soon you keep building bigger and bigger bombs. Finally, I decided to stop because the consequences if something went wrong would be life altering in a very bad way. M80's were the perfect size salute. My neighbor was the sheriff and he confiscated some Seal bombs from kids that were blowing up people's mail boxes ! He gave them to me for the 4th cuz he figured I could handle them. They were definitely powerful. All this livefor fireworks eventually led to me getting my Pyrotechnicians license and I fired Pro 1.3g shows for a couple years. It was alot of fun. Fireworks get in your blood.
Great video on old school big firecrackers !!
in th e70's when we lit off an M-80's leaves fell from the near by trees... :) made a few home made works.. with match heads then put it in a full vacuum cleaner bag for that added FX
Yeah we stuffed match heads into left over whip hit cannisters.... giant explosions & super loud.
Love them I was fortunate snuff to play with all of the above in the 60s
Back in '70 my dad's college friend in Colorado we visited, showed us how to do the 4th. They lived up 13 Mile Road. He lobbed full sticks off the cliff into the canyon. Good times.
Brings me back, we used to have these silver ones we called "ashcans" not quite as powerful as an m-80 but still loud.
Yes, ashcans. Looked like an m-80 but silver.
Had them in the 60's
@@Flussig1
Fuse in the middle? We called them hammer heads
Silver Salutes we called them.
Wish we could get those today. Thanks for the show!
@checkmatekingtwothisiswhit7685 Same dude, it would be nice to be able to find M-80s for sale in your local fireworks store but these bureaucrats are outta control, they could've just added a age limit of being 13-16ish and up in order to purchase M-80's instead of completely banning great American firecrackers since the child protection act started the ban of these awesome devices, the age limit rule would just be like poland with its age limits on different classes (power levels) of firecrackers
I bought a M-80 from a tool guy at where I work and it blew a big crater in my backyard
We used to use punks to light em. Punks were (still are) like a sparkler that only glows, kinda like incense. Cool video!
I have a few vintage M-80’s that my uncle found in his old toy chest. Keep forgetting i have them, this just reminded me 😂
In the Baltimore area we had an item called 1/4 sticks twice the size of a M80 and vary loud ,this was back in the 70s .
Reminds me of around 1980. Glad I still have all my fingers 😆
We used to get those when I was a kid. I remember hearing stories about people blowing off fingers.
Man what i would do to have a big bag of m80s. Also those fuses seem pretty quick for such a dangerous thing. Great video
I remember them well. I am 52 years old so yeah, wow brings back memories.
Back in the 1960's, my folks were going to my Grandmother's place out of state. We stopped at a Roadside park for a break. On my way back to the car, I spotted a box next to a tree. I walked over and looked inside and it was 70% full of M80's. It was a gross size box so I figured there were 100 left. Wow, I picked them up and finished the trip. We sure had a good time at Grandma's that Summer:) !!
Was raining one night, my brother and I took 2 M-80 and twisted the fuses together. Placed them on the wet pavement and OMG ! It shook the windows of the house and there was about a 12" circle of the wet street that was completly dry ! This was in the late 1960's when you could get the good stuff.
I wonder if they went off together? Maybe even the concussion of one set of the other, like dynamite does.
@MrTruckerf high speed camera would have been cool to watch that's the only way you could tell it happened so fast
@MrTruckerf
It's a distinct possibility that you could get sympathetic explosion. The powders in cherry bombs and m80s are not black powder and hence were sensitive enough to shock that that could have happened. Due largely to the use of perchlorates as oxidizer.
Back in 1970, (in Michigan) a friend of mine lit an M-80 and accidentally dropped it in the mud next to his boot. Although he tried to get away? To this day, he's walking about without a couple of his toes.
I knew a couple other guys who were 'young chemists' and would make their own plastic explosives. They packed the stuff in 'Pringles' cans or some other cardboard tube, and would either make a detonator or use an M-80 with a greatly extended fuse to set it off.
One day in the dead of winter, we all went up north to a lake, and used an ice auger to drill a hole for each one. While one of us would be standing back with a camera, another one would light it and shove it down the hole under the ice. The fountain of ice pieces would shoot *WAY* up in the sky, making for a great picture. When done, the bubbling hole of ice pieces and mud must have been 30 feet across!
Someplace I still have those pictures!
I use to throw m80s like popits. I had a way to pack them that’d double the parameter of the bald patch in the grass. My buds & I caused so much fun back in the day. 🤣
My dad already bought his stash of m80s, among other great fireworks. hes gonna make it loud for the get-together
@noahboat580 Man that sounds fun, have a happy July 4th!
The good ole days !
Then there were the Blockbusters and Pineapples.
In the 80's it was as easy as a drive to Chinatown (NYC) or a connection to someone even distantly associated with the mob. It was everywhere.
Mobster John Gotti used to put on a huge fireworks display for everyone to enjoy. I heard it cost like 10 grand
When I was a kid, my dad brought home an m80. It said M-80 Smoke, Genade Simulator. It cleared a patch of grass about 18” across
Buddy and I were into chemistry sets. Wanted to make gun powder. Had it all but potassium nitrate…. Salt Peter. Ordered some and picked it up at the train station. Got the mix with the other ingredients just right. Filled a ping pong ball to the brim. Stuffed a fuse we bought from a comic book in the fill hole and cork around it to seal it good. Put it in my back yard and secretly lit the fuze so my parents wouldn’t know. The explosion and flash was incredible and the echo resounded in the distance forever. 😂
I think everyone in town came outside to see what blew up. Good times!
Set off scads of m80’s as a kid and one m100 and I still have all my fingers👍
Hey I still have all my fingers! Lit a lot of M80’s
I've looked everywhere for the old m-80s sure wish you could find them!
Just gotta laugh at you running! Reminds of when i was a kid in the early 70's. Only time i ever saw my dad run is when he lit off M-80's on the 4th.
I never messed with these much when I was a kid. I now live in a place that has terrible snow drifts. I wish I could find some that have longer fuses and that I could use to break up snow drifts.
😂 I wish I could still get M-80’s, we used to have so much fun with those
They were made and used for agriculture to distribute insecticide in bags from a plane...
U can get them if u try
One 4th of July…in the early 80s we had the red M80s and some silver M80s. Those silver ones were just as loud and would light up the whole back yard.
We called them ashcans.
Yep, ashcans. They were slightly smaller than M-80s, and had some printing around them as well. Nothing beat the M-80s, except blockbusters. The older kids had those.
We had silver ones that we called 'Silver Salutes'. They were definitely in the M-80 to Cherry Bomb power range. Haven't seen any for over 50 years. Maybe even 60 years. I am 72 so I grew up in the Golden Age of illegal fireworks.
Many fond memories of incarceration worthy mischief and mayhem with M-80’s paired with my Wrist Rocket slingshot or cigarette fuse. 😬😎
Back in the 60s, we lit em and threw them OR set them under an aluminum Folgers coffee can. THAT threw shrapnel all over the place. An M-80 would also blow up a mail box of you thew it in and shut the box door. Man those were the days,
I don’t remember the 2” flash salute, but definitely remember the cherry bomb and M-80! 👍🏻😎
I put an m-80 under an empty coffee can once and the can didn't move a bit. Then about 20 or 30 seconds later the bottom of the can came floating down. Glad it went straight up instead of hitting me.
Used to roll these down the storm sewers and the neighbors thought it to be sewer gas exploding.
The big boy I remember from my youth was something called an "ash can". If I remember correctly it looked a lot like the M-80.
The biggest thing I got a hold of in the mid-'80s were M-60s. They were built the same as an M-80 just a little smaller. My dad was a truck driver and would bring interesting fireworks home from his trips. I cut one open to find out what was inside. The tube was filled with sawdust and the fuse went into a small capsule, similar in size and looks to over the counter pain relief medications. I didn't try opening up the capsule.
When I was a kid we used to be able to buy those with no restrictions. There were a lot of fun. There's no comparison to the crap they sell today
lol lighting the thing with the match burned halfway down or out completely brings back memories
My dad always lit a ceegar on 4 july to light the fun
Miss you dad, RIP
That was the only time my dad ever lit one up, too.
used to "fish" with the m-80s we were supposed to be working cleaning up a little beach front park we would take a 3/4 nut around the m-80 and throw it in an area with a lot of minnows.
I haven't seen those things in YEARS!
We used to plant C-bombs and M 80’s in the lawns of old crouchey folk in our neighborhood,and light a cigarette, stick it on the fuse and just walk away very quietly, we’d sit down half a block away and wait for the “fireworks “ . good times
I remember when my older brother lit an M-80 under my bed! Good times!!!
Awesome stuff! I miss the old firework days.
I was still able to get my hands on these as late as maybe 1980 by driving through the Holland Tunnel to Chinatown (NY). The street hawkers would be out there, they would hop into the back seat of the car and take you to some obscure, nondescript, shady apartment, devoid of furniture, where there would be open boxes of goodies. Cash only, thank you.
I used to get the powder from around ten M-80's and wrap it tight with tin foil.. Light the fuse and run for dear life !!
Haha, awesome dude! 👍 🔥
Me and my friend lived in a trailer park growing up and we got our hands on a couple of quarter sticks and decided to light them both up at 3 in the morning and the echo and blast it made because of the aluminum trailers was f**king crazy 🤣
I once put an M-80 under a number 2 1/2 tin can. The can just sort of jumped up two inches but the end went out of sight never to be found.
Kids today have no clue about M-80s and pinching Piccolo Petes in a vice.
I don't know about the other two but I cut open an M80 about 30 years ago. There was a small plastic capsule in there maybe twice the size of a Tylenol capsule, that was the charge. I was a bit surprised at the inside, very loud though.
Back in the early 60s Cherry Bombs were 25 cents. You could go into any bait shop and find them on the counter top in a carton. Plus there was always some guy selling M80s out of his trunk, and if you were lucky a 1/4 stick. Not for 25 cents though. Remember a slingshot called a wrist rocket? It was a piece of metal shaped to fit around your wrist with a handle. You needed a friend to help you do this, but I would load an M80 in the sling. Pull it back as far as I could. Have my friend light the fuse and shoot it straight up. By the time the M80 reached 60 or 70 feet in the air it would go off. KA-BOOM! It was a lot more fun being a kid back then.
@timmitzlaff8960 Does sound Very fun lol
I used to tie M80s to a weight & set em off in my apartment complex swimming pool…
Ahhh, my gloriously misspent youth 😎
That brought back my childhood I just called my son over and showed him
Told him how we would fill up a 2 liter bottle with gas and an m80 would fit perfect in the top it blow a 20’ ball of fire in the air now that was fun 😂
@@74bz Sounds like lotsa fun!
I used to make my own cherry bombs when you couldn’t get cherry bombs anymore. I’d hollow out a smoke bomb and stuff them with as much firecracker powder as I could. Usually 20-40 firecrackers. This was 40 years ago when they had a lot in them. Put a drop of glue in the hole you hollowed out the smoke bomb then take small strips of duct tape and wrap it til it’s about 1.5-2 inches in size. There you go.
If you wrap a bunch of sparklers very tightly with electrical tape the will explode, too.
By law, a small firecrackers can contain a maximum of 50 mg of flash powder. So 10 or 20 of them would be 0.5g and 1.0 g respectively. So that was a respectable amount of flash powder powder and provide a satisfying boom. As you likely noted, the powder is not black powder at all. It's similar but the oxidizer is different as well as the presence of aluminum dust. That's why they call them flashlight crackers because they are brighter due to the aluminum dust which provides bright white Flash. And because it's also Burns at a higher speed it makes a sharper report than black powder. providing
We used to take an empty bubble container, fill it with lighter fluid, put a hole in the lid and push a cherry bomb fuse through the hole. Then, we would put a lit cigarette on the fuse so we could get away far enough and watch what would happen. A fireball about 20 feet in the air. Ah, good times😂
This was our Arsenal back in the ‘60’s !!!!
🎉
I was raised in the 1960s, when M-80s had the same cachet as the Jaguar XK-E and the Luger pistol. You could always tell the kids who played with M-80s: They were missing a tip of a finger or something.
Remember stores stocked with firecrackers at Halloween like others do with candy year-round. Little Ladyfingers, Atoms,....big red packages like bricks.
Nice video. You should do a daytime comparison, placing each on the lawn to show the results 🤠
Got a scar above my upper lip from an M80 blast in an aluminum can. With the 7 second timed fuses, they were great for throwing off the balcony at concerts.
SWEET BOOMS ! I am your 58th sub.
1.5k
Thanks!
I need to know where to get them now. LOL. Had lots of fun back in the 60s with them.
My dad tells stories about flushing cherry bombs down the commode at school. 😂