We used to mess around with M-80s but we respected them greatly.
Cherry bombs too and torpedos the size of half dollars. Even today they are not powerful as the ones we could buy but still...Thank God we survived.
I spent the Fourth in New York once with some Nam buds...
the streets were an inch deep in Chinese newspaper. My friends lived on the edge of Harlem , we were on the roof
of his apartment block and throwing stuff down at the brothers while they were shooting rockets and roman candles up at us...a lot of fun was had by all!
Firecrackers, especially the one-inch ones, were fairly harmless. But M-80s are setious pyrotechnics.