The Good Old Days (cont.)

TW: In this case the real deal in terms of "good old days", everything the piece says I agree with. I loved that cap gun ammo. I assume cap guns are long gone for probably obvious reasons.

From TYWKIWDBI blog:

"What fascinated me wasn't the gun itself - it was the caps. They came on a rolled piece of paper designed to be inserted into the grip or hammer area of the gun, but the things one could do with the caps were limited only by one's imagination.Everyone knew that you could tear the paper strip into individual caps, stack them up on the concrete, and then whack the stack with a hammer (or, more conveniently, with the butt of the gun). With enough caps, you could generate a substantial and very gratifying explosion. They didn't do well with fire or the heat of a magnifying glass - they burned well, but of course there was no explosion.

With a little practice, you could explode individual caps with your fingernail. This could be done on a rock or other hard surface, but the best way was to put the cap on your thumbnail and then explode it by scraping it with another fingernail. It didn't hurt - and it left a very satisfactory black smoke mark on your nail.The ones I remember are different from the gun displayed in the video above; that one actually shoots some type of pellet. The ones I remember were basically noisemakers. But the explosions were great, and I can still vividly recall the smell of burning gunpowder."