My brothers and I used to take rolls of caps (remember them?) and hit the little exploding dots with a rock or hammer. Sometimes we’d fold them so we were striking several caps at a time. I can still remember that smell. We were warned over and over again we would lose a finger but we did it anyway. We all still have ten fingers.
We did the same thing. We also used a magnifying class to explode them. We would lay in the back window of the car when my mom was driving and roll out when she came to a stop. LOL She would be arrested for child abuse now. However, I am a big believer in seat belts. We had a fun childhood, though.
No imagination.
We used to use a pin to patiently rip open each little dot on rolls of caps to collect the gunpowder inside.
Then we'd use the powder we collected to make giant firecrackers or skyrockets.
And we still have almost all our fingers.
We would squish the roll of caps down as flat as we could, between our thumb and forefinger, then put it on the sidewalk and hit it with a hammer. If we were lucky every cap on the roll would go off.
As I think back on it now we were never at a loss for finding something ‘to do’. Those of us from that age certainly understand our parents’ admonition “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop!”
Boys brought cap pistols to school
We would throw a whole box of caps into a campfire. Same with aerosol cans. The latter, I would not recommend, though.
Whole roll at a time was the only way baby.
I would take a roll and set it upright, get a baseball bat and hold it vertically, then draw back and bring the damn thing down on the whole roll.
It made a very nice noise. :-)
I also remember my friend, Rusty, and I unrolling firecrackers and harvesting the gunpowder. We’d get a used kite-string tube, wax a penny in one end, and fill the rest with the GP, finishing the other end with a penny and wax. Then we’d drill a small hole in the middle and stick in a fuse.
We’d go out to the wood pile in his back yard, stick it done a few rows, and light it. Big noise and wood everywhere.
I used to love those little exploding dots! I’d stick them in my little cowboy gun that I kept in my holster on my hip while I galloped around my back yard on my broom stick horse. LOL