The coolest thing in all the world when you were aged eleven

[Paul Calf]

Communism

You're 112 years old?

[hedgehog90]

I thought Muse were really really good

I was doing work experience at a graphic design agency around the time when Black Holes and Revelations came out.
During my lunch break one day I bought a second copy at HMV, for the remainder of my time there I forced everyone to listen to it repeatedly, 3 or maybe 4 times.
Christ... It's one of my most embarrassing memories.

Muse is a stain on so many souls.

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The super soaker on the previous page looks too modern to me, and much much shitter than the model I got:



Except that where I was, that was numbered Super Soaker 100.  The 50 version was a piddling little thing.


Edited to add:

The next model up, here numbered the 100, was the Super Soaker 500:



My little brother ended up getting that one, and I was jealous of him.  Before using it, it seemed like it would be way cooler than the model I had.  But in use it was far flimsier (it was built with the same stuff as my model, but the extra water meant it needed better structural integrity), too heavy, and that business with the little ball at the back was nonsense. 

Mine was exactly the right combination in the end of range, balance, weight and all that.  My Dad still stores it in the hallway so that he can suddenly chase cats out of the garden or squirt wasps into the pond.  Here it is numbered the way I remember it:

[Sebastian Cobb]

I had the same one as that in the same colours. It was good until I somehow managed to snap the barrel.

Those later ones required much less pumping though.

[José]

tuggin' on mah dang ol dingus.

[pancreas]

What colours did you play?

Black and red.

[Brundle-Fly]

Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.

The disparity of ages on CaB is ruddy brilliant. That seems like ten minutes ago to me.

[idunnosomename]

My cousin had this. It took about ten minutes to pump up and then shot its entire load in a split second.

that is what she said

[kalowski]

God some of you are so young!

[Phoenix Lazarus]

You're 112 years old?

He could have had a parent who indoctrinated him with communist ideals, like my dad always going, 'Labour good;Tories bad."

[checkoutgirl]

Big into this as an 11 year old. Wanted it for Christmas but never got it. Perhaps I had gone off the idea by then. As a kid I went through these obsessional phases where I had to have this toy or shoe or contraption but by the time Christmas or birthday came around I'd forgotten about it and moved on to something else.



Oh and this, on cassette tape naturally. By the time I was 12 I had graduated to stronger potency stuff like To The Extreme by Vanilla Ice. It was not an easy time. I was more animal than man.



...and the classic spudgun of course. Never got one of my own.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The super soaker on the previous page looks too modern to me, and much much shitter than the model I got:

I'm ridiculously jealous of yours, I had to put up with shit like this as a kid:

[Hecate]

[Neomod]

Yute's are fickle and so a month later my coolest thing was this¹. Not available in the uk at the time so added kudos.



Thanks to my mum bringing home a bumper box of star wars toys from a visit to my auntie in the states. My sister got the Grease double album soundtrack.

_{1.and by extension me at school}

[Jockice]

Kenny Dalglish and Showaddywaddy. Oh sorry, I meant The Velvet Underground or Bob Dylan.

[New Jack]

Nowt wrong with King Kenny!!

THE UNDERTAKER

... I haven't grown up one bit

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Black and red.

WHICH COLOURS ARE THEY??

[New Jack]

Black and red.

WHICH COLOURS ARE THEY??

Anarchy was cool when I was 11 too!

... coming round to it now in all fairness

[Wet Blanket]

Kickers shoes, Pogs and Oasis

[Jockice]

Nowt wrong with King Kenny!!

Apart from leaving Celtic for Liverpool. Broke my heart that did.

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I'm ridiculously jealous of yours, I had to put up with shit like this as a kid:

Oh yes those leaking bastards certainly were the norm until the early 90s, and until Super Soakers came out water fights could only involve those piddling little pistols, unless some bright spark realised they could liven things up with water balloons or just chucking a bucket of water over their target.  I remember it well. 

Water balloons were banned from all the water fights I had, because nobody's parents wanted to pick up the balloons from the garden afterwards, and the 'bucket of water' strategy was cunty; my older brother would always do it to fuck up my water fights whenever they happened at our place.  Eleven years older than me and my pals, just standing by the front door with the bucket of water until somebody inevitably needed to run past him, whereupon they would be thoroughly drenched by him and start crying.  And my brother would then refill the bucket and wait again.  Us aged about 7, him aged about 18.


The 90s churned out some very tempting garden-play novelties, and I managed to get a few of them but the appeal of them always tended to wear off pretty quickly.  For example there was a hard plastic ball with a little pin inside it, and a mechanical timer that would be activated by turning a dial on the outside.  When the timer ran out, the pin would briefly jab inwards.  Inside the plastic ball you would place a water balloon, so that the timer running out would mean water popping everywhere, through the holes in the ball.

It was called Splash Out:



You were meant to throw the ball between your friends until the water balloon popped and get a "hahaaah" moment, but the ball was solid plastic so it just wasn't a nice ball to throw.  It felt sturdy but I was sure that dropping it enough times would fuck the mechanism, so I hardly played with it.  And what pointless expense and faffing about for a game of "catch the water balloon".  And yet the advert made it seem really exciting so I bought it.  That's the power of advertising to kids, I guess.

[boki]

Kenny Dalglish and Showaddywaddy.

Can confirm.  I dunno if I had much of a concept of cool at 11, though.  I was starting to get into hard rock, but with it being the hair metal era, yer likes of Jon Bon Jovi and Joey Tempest seemed a bit too girly to be really cool. 

A couple of years later I saw the video for 'This Corrosion' by the Sisters Of Mercy on The Chart Show and thought that Eldritch looked like the coolest motherfucker in two shoes.

[Sebastian Cobb]

In between shit trigger-pump pistols and super soakers were those sliding pistol ones that acted like a syringe.

[baptist]

Sta prest trousers, Fred Perry t-shirt, waffle cardigan, black tassel shoes and white terry toweling socks. Maybe a piano tie if there was a school disco etc.

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Just getting a 1980s memory now of drinking from an old water pistol that had probably belonged to my older brother a decade earlier.  Intensely sucking at the nozzle because the squirting rate can't have been very good.  Must have been a hot day or something, but I recall doing it many many times on different days, so I probably just found it very refreshing.

I also used to enjoy sucking my flannel when lying in the bath.  Dehydrated from the hot water and all the steam, while the water in the flannel had cooled down; very pleasant.

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In between shit trigger-pump pistols and super soakers were those sliding pistol ones that acted like a syringe.

Oh yes.  In fact there were most definitely some actual syringes as well that were knocking about; I don't know how that happened.  They never had needles or anything but they seemed authentic enough.  I wonder if the doctor had a habit of gifting them to children so they could learn about hydraulics, or they were sold as actual toys in shops.

Years later I used my syringes as a plant-watering tool.  Very handy.

[Cuellar]

Don't remember sorry. I think that was the age I just started to keep my head down and grind through. Didn't expect anything, ubi nihil vales ibi nihil velis.

[New Jack]

Apart from leaving Celtic for Liverpool. Broke my heart that did.

Ahh I can see how that would wreck ya. Still, you got Brendan now! Right? Right...?

[Jerzy Bondov]

The LEGO Batman Movie