the SONIC BLASTER! (by MARX!) one of the greatest, most dangerous toys ever made. this was a plunger device that would push air out of this plastic barrel with such force that (i guess) it would break the sound barrier. it made a big booming blasting sound like a cannon when you fired it. it was just moving air! i had one when i was a kid – it was cool!
of course, kids being kids, the first thing we all did was to fire the damned thing into our faces and (eventually) ears. or better yet, into the ears of our siblings. the result was (of course) ripped ear drums and the threat of deafness. they disappeared from the market almost as soon as they appeared.
cut to 50 years later. the over-the-top techno performance group Survival Research Laboratories was reminiscing about children’s toys and this item came up. immediately, they did a search online in the patent office files and found the original schematic/diagram patent application. so, they had the original blueprints on how to build these things!
SRL, of course, always seriously OVERBUILDS anything they attempt. by the time they finished their version of a sonic cannon, it was the size of a trailer (it had to be towed). same device, just 100 times BIGGER. the threat of crowd deafness was very real. and it could literally blow down flimsy structures. it was amazing.
i saw it in performance once and the guys running that cannon were drunk as skunks and having a great time. they kept blasting it into the crowd to watch everybody’s hair whip around on their heads. they finally started blasting it into a burning shed and actually extinguished the fire. finally, a square-wheeled vehicle powered with a supercharged v-8 engine spun wildly out of control and slammed into the cannon, putting it out of commission.
thank god.
https://youtu.be/El6t8lcz0V4
