Probably before your time but before they invented inner tubes bike tires were solid rubber. The new “baloon” tires were an instant success as you can well imagine. I can just remember some bikes still having solid rubber tires but 99% of them had inner tubes.
Strips of those "live rubber" inner tubes made great power bands for what are now euphemistically called, "slingshots". And circular slices made amazingly effective "ammunition" for the wooden "rubber (band) guns" we made for ourselves during toy-scarce WWII.
It required a lot of notch-cutting work with a coping saw, but I even made for myself a record-breaking 22-shot "tommy gun" that fired all 22 bands in sequence when a length of twine beneath them was pulled upward...
We even made a "mudball cannon" by tying an entire red bicycle tube into the fork of a willow tree. Range: over 100 yards with a dried ball of clay...
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Nowadays, kids will reject any toy that doesn't have at least a 32-bit microprocessor. Forget making your own fun...