Did you ever play war games when you were a child? Not the Call Of Duty kind -- I'm talking about old-school kid-warring, with toys and outdoors and the occasional bruise and all that jazz. At some point, it always seemed to devolve into a kind of pissing-match mayhem, with the most competitive children doing a toy-gun version of the time-honored "my dad's better than your dad" argument: "Oh yeah? Well, my gun shoots lighting and dragons!"
Some of those kids evidently grew up to be weapon designers, which is how humanity now has the alluring chance to be shot in the dick with ridiculous weaponized playground fixtures such as ...
#5. A Stupidly Overpowered Water Pistol
JPX
Unless you live in a country where there's no call for toy guns because someone stuck a real one in your hand by the time you were 5, you can't really consider your childhood a proper one if you've never been involved in a good ol' water-gun battle. You know the rules; teams will dissolve into all-on-all mayhem within seconds, everyone will immediately gang up on the dickface who brought water balloons, and no one ever, ever fills their tank with anything other than classic H2O.
No one, that is, except for that one guy. He's probably called Chad or Steve, and chances are he does weird things to kittens in the basement until he grows up to be a business consultant. But right now, he's spraying you head to toe with that absurdly overpowered Super Soaker his parents got him for his birthday instead of love, and kid, that's not water.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and Chad-or-Steve is somehow in charge of a weapons program, and what he's creating is the exact thing you assume. No, not murders (he does that in his spare time). I'm still talking about water pistols that are filled with things that smell funny, only now, it's capsaicin. Behold, the latest in water-pistol riot control:
JPX
"Why are your pants wet? I shot you in the fa- oh."
It's called the JPX Jet Protector, and it's essentially a gun that shoots a torrent of liquid pain into your face from a much farther distance and with more accuracy than your average tear gas spray could ever hope to achieve. It also has the worst fucking marketing team in the world, considering that this quote is actually used in the promotional video:
YouTube
"Johnny Piexon's Invisible Masturbation Cape: With our products, the world is your bukkake!"
Look, I get that we live in a world where, occasionally, folks need to get maced, and other folks who don't get maced anyway. Still, I think giving authorities a weapon that can deal out Satan's money shots left and right before you can blink -- especially as a huge percentage of cops are not exactly known for the marksmanship abilities necessary for these kinds of headshots -- is pretty much just reenacting those chaotic water battles of yesteryear, only now everyone gets swollen eyes and tons of screaming opportunities.
Aaand that's why I propose we keep these things the shit off the streets, and instead buy them all and set up a reality show where a bunch of G-list celebrities water-pistol fight each other with them.
#4. A Garden-Hose Tank
Via Vikicizer/Wiki Commons
To keep with our fine start of discussing the art of water combat, we must not forget the almighty garden hose: Whoever lay claim to that baby during a water-pistol fight or, hell, on any given afternoon, ruled the exact area of the hose's length however they damn well pleased. Especially if they had one of those pistol nozzle things that make the water pressure really hurt.
Does that bring up fond memories or make you suspect that if you'd ever experienced it the memories acquired might be cherished later on? If so, you sure as shit don't live in Turkey, where water warfare is a very real thing and there are actual attack vehicles making sure that you damn well get hosed if you play for the wrong team.
As you may have registered from the several protests in the area that have made the news recently, Turkey is in a tumultuous political state of the sort where things are less "let's sit down and discuss this" and more "let's hurl insults and rocks at each other until someone blacks out." There are protests. There are throngs. And, as is often the case wherever those things occur, there are shitloads of riot cops making sure everyone they consider too rowdy leaves with less teeth than they started the day with.
One of their most effective tools of crowd control is the TOMA crowd control vehicle, which is basically the garden hose of childhood, only Super Saiyan'd the hell up and placed atop a SWAT van. Your average TOMA can shoot plenty more than plain water, too; other available options include foam (because every protest carries the inherent potential to get fabulously down) and if they're feeling particularly dickish, dye. Because fuck you, dude, you should've thought twice before joining the Green Party. All this might make TOMAs sound like something Burgess Meredith might use against a pajama-clad Adam West, but when you see it in action, it's fucking terrifying:
via YouTube
Be glad I didn't link to the ones where they flat-out run over the protesters.
And those are just the original TOMAs, which are basically large rape vans that shoot streams of suspicious liquid at people, a mental image that will make your next viewing of the above video infinitely more interesting. There are newer, flashier versions out there too. Here, take a look at the next-gen TOMA2:
Via Wikipedia
Because they totally needed to make that thing even more intimidating.
Man, that fucker is ready to start a Water World War all by itself.
#3. An Electricity Shotgun
TrussCo
Hey, remember that stupid-ass lightning gun example that I threw out as an offhand joke in the intro? Surprise, motherfucker -- that baby was a brick joke, and this is where it lands. Also, that link is to TV Tropes -- for the love of Cthulhu, finish this column before you click it, lest you be swept away like driftwood and never be seen again.
Uh, where were we? Right, the lightning gun. It is, in fact, a lightning shotgun, made by none other than the good people behind the totally-not-lethal-except-when-it-is weapon we know as the Taser. Also, apart from the platypus, it's the stupidest-looking thing in existence that can kill you:
Taser International
You know, aside from any laugh-related heart attack.
That, friends, is the world's angriest chubby policeman inexplicably threatening you with what appears to be a large, goofy toy gun. I wouldn't be half surprised to see a Hello Kitty face on its side. Alas, like I said, it can kill you. Even the manufacturers of that particular version don't bother hiding it:
Taser International
"Less-lethal" is to "safe" what "Adam Sandler" is to "funny."
Still, it's a shotgun that fires rounds that electrocute you, which should be more than enough to make the boners of our notoriously toys 'n' testosterone-happy police shoot right off the Brinell scale. How come every officer isn't carrying one of these lightning boomsticks, drunkenly firing voltage at passersby while screaming "BOW TO THE ODINSON, MORTALS"?
It's because shotgun-tasing people is bullshit in more than one way: Not only can it randomly kill people, it can also completely fail to have any effect on them at all during situations when it really, really needs to. Britain learned this the hard way when testing out Taser's XREP shotgun rounds. In 2010, a massive police manhunt for dangerous murderer Raoul Moat ended up taking on more sitcom-ish elements than such situations arguably should, when a final standoff between the police and Moat saw the cops fire two XREPs at the killer, connecting with one, that had literally zero effect. Three years later, when another round of testing resulted in the death of a 23-year-old kid due to a "medical episode," they realized the weapon was clearly part of some cruel cosmic joke and quietly returned it back to ACME. Sorry, I mean Taser International.
2. Tactical Pens
Uzi
"Wait, what?" you say. "Pens are no toys, unless you misspell them in a hilarious way, and even then, holy shit that's inappropriate when you're talking about kids." While that is true, narratively convenient strawman reader I just made up, I'd like to point out that if you think kids aren't playing with pens, you've clearly never been in a math class full of 11-year-olds on a particularly sunny Thursday afternoon. I once ended up with a half-sleeve pen tattoo of Tic-Tac-Toe before the teacher noticed.
Remember that one kid in class who always kept poking people with his pen (yes, I'm talking about the actual writing tool, you creep) and/or attempted to draw some bullshit on their skin with it? Remember that one time he got reprimanded by the teacher for etching swastikas on Timmy's forehead again and got into such trouble that he begrudgingly abandoned his pen fixation and moved to other flavors of ADD?
Because that kid is all grown up now, and he sure as shit remembers.
At least, that's the only way I can explain the existence of the humble tactical pen, the only weapon in the world literally capable of both kicking ass and taking names. It's not just some random spy-pen-gun, either -- it's a fully functional pen that just happens to be constructed in a way that can kick your face from here to next Wednesday. Boasting features such as DNA catchers and glassbreaker tips, these stabby, airplane-quality-aluminum things are apparently a pretty huge industry. Gun manufacturers including Smith & Wesson and Colt all have a tactical pen or 16 in their product catalog. Here's a guy from UZI (yep, that UZI) demonstrating how to thoroughly wreck an armed and armored person with one:
KnifeHQ
"The guy was demonstration. The pane of glass was personal ... it fucked my wife."
That leaves just one question: Why the hell does this product exist? I understand those sturdy flashlights that you can use to club an enemy, but I can think of only two scenarios where you would both be the kind of person who owns a fucking tactical pen and have absolutely no other weaponry on your person when push comes to shove; either you're a Navy SEAL who's six weeks into his mission and literally all of his other equipment (including at least two pairs of rolled-up underwear) is already stuck in the ribcage of some enemy or another ... or you're that fucking pen-happy kid as an adult, putting finishing touches on your time machine in order to deliver a box of these fucking things to your 10-year-old self. Let's see them take your pen away from you this time.
#1. RC Vehicles With Weapons
CNNMoney
Ah, radio-controlled toys! A decent-sized RC car was the coolest present a kid growing up in the archaic pre-widespread Internet days of the 1980s or 1990s could imagine, at least for the 15 minutes or so that it could provide entertainment.
See, that's the thing: A thing that just moves around isn't going to be any fun for your average kid unless it actually does something. That something being "attack something else." As such, ride-pimping was aplenty: While some kids were satisfied just bumping their RC cars on peoples' ankles, others started customizing theirs in a way that would in later life earn them a stint on Robot Wars or, alternately, in prison. Thanks to an ill-advised kamikaze attempt aimed at a nearby rose bush, I blew up one car with fireworks after a couple of weeks, then pretended it got lost because I was kind of a shitty kid that way.
And now that the kids from those RC warrin' decades are adults with actual budgets and shit, is it really any surprise that some of them are building on that thought?
It's not. So here's a video of a radio-controlled drone tasing a man.
CNNMoney
Twelve-year-old me just punched the sky.
Just nonchalantly flying in, all radio-controlled-helicopter and shit, and straight-up electrocuting an intern. Let's watch that again:
CNNMoney
I just ordered 1,000 of these for the Cracked offices, and I don't even physically work there.
Why did they do this, you ask? Why, because they'd seen these things in sci-fi movies and video games and wanted to show they were possible. That's right: People are now building remote-controlled childhood-dream-toy murderbots, just because they fucking can. Tell me we're not living in a beautiful world.
Some of those kids evidently grew up to be weapon designers, which is how humanity now has the alluring chance to be shot in the dick with ridiculous weaponized playground fixtures such as ...
#5. A Stupidly Overpowered Water Pistol
Unless you live in a country where there's no call for toy guns because someone stuck a real one in your hand by the time you were 5, you can't really consider your childhood a proper one if you've never been involved in a good ol' water-gun battle. You know the rules; teams will dissolve into all-on-all mayhem within seconds, everyone will immediately gang up on the dickface who brought water balloons, and no one ever, ever fills their tank with anything other than classic H2O.
No one, that is, except for that one guy. He's probably called Chad or Steve, and chances are he does weird things to kittens in the basement until he grows up to be a business consultant. But right now, he's spraying you head to toe with that absurdly overpowered Super Soaker his parents got him for his birthday instead of love, and kid, that's not water.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and Chad-or-Steve is somehow in charge of a weapons program, and what he's creating is the exact thing you assume. No, not murders (he does that in his spare time). I'm still talking about water pistols that are filled with things that smell funny, only now, it's capsaicin. Behold, the latest in water-pistol riot control:
"Why are your pants wet? I shot you in the fa- oh."
It's called the JPX Jet Protector, and it's essentially a gun that shoots a torrent of liquid pain into your face from a much farther distance and with more accuracy than your average tear gas spray could ever hope to achieve. It also has the worst fucking marketing team in the world, considering that this quote is actually used in the promotional video:
"Johnny Piexon's Invisible Masturbation Cape: With our products, the world is your bukkake!"
Look, I get that we live in a world where, occasionally, folks need to get maced, and other folks who don't get maced anyway. Still, I think giving authorities a weapon that can deal out Satan's money shots left and right before you can blink -- especially as a huge percentage of cops are not exactly known for the marksmanship abilities necessary for these kinds of headshots -- is pretty much just reenacting those chaotic water battles of yesteryear, only now everyone gets swollen eyes and tons of screaming opportunities.
Aaand that's why I propose we keep these things the shit off the streets, and instead buy them all and set up a reality show where a bunch of G-list celebrities water-pistol fight each other with them.
#4. A Garden-Hose Tank
To keep with our fine start of discussing the art of water combat, we must not forget the almighty garden hose: Whoever lay claim to that baby during a water-pistol fight or, hell, on any given afternoon, ruled the exact area of the hose's length however they damn well pleased. Especially if they had one of those pistol nozzle things that make the water pressure really hurt.
Does that bring up fond memories or make you suspect that if you'd ever experienced it the memories acquired might be cherished later on? If so, you sure as shit don't live in Turkey, where water warfare is a very real thing and there are actual attack vehicles making sure that you damn well get hosed if you play for the wrong team.
As you may have registered from the several protests in the area that have made the news recently, Turkey is in a tumultuous political state of the sort where things are less "let's sit down and discuss this" and more "let's hurl insults and rocks at each other until someone blacks out." There are protests. There are throngs. And, as is often the case wherever those things occur, there are shitloads of riot cops making sure everyone they consider too rowdy leaves with less teeth than they started the day with.
One of their most effective tools of crowd control is the TOMA crowd control vehicle, which is basically the garden hose of childhood, only Super Saiyan'd the hell up and placed atop a SWAT van. Your average TOMA can shoot plenty more than plain water, too; other available options include foam (because every protest carries the inherent potential to get fabulously down) and if they're feeling particularly dickish, dye. Because fuck you, dude, you should've thought twice before joining the Green Party. All this might make TOMAs sound like something Burgess Meredith might use against a pajama-clad Adam West, but when you see it in action, it's fucking terrifying:
Be glad I didn't link to the ones where they flat-out run over the protesters.
And those are just the original TOMAs, which are basically large rape vans that shoot streams of suspicious liquid at people, a mental image that will make your next viewing of the above video infinitely more interesting. There are newer, flashier versions out there too. Here, take a look at the next-gen TOMA2:
Because they totally needed to make that thing even more intimidating.
Man, that fucker is ready to start a Water World War all by itself.
#3. An Electricity Shotgun
Hey, remember that stupid-ass lightning gun example that I threw out as an offhand joke in the intro? Surprise, motherfucker -- that baby was a brick joke, and this is where it lands. Also, that link is to TV Tropes -- for the love of Cthulhu, finish this column before you click it, lest you be swept away like driftwood and never be seen again.
Uh, where were we? Right, the lightning gun. It is, in fact, a lightning shotgun, made by none other than the good people behind the totally-not-lethal-except-when-it-is weapon we know as the Taser. Also, apart from the platypus, it's the stupidest-looking thing in existence that can kill you:
You know, aside from any laugh-related heart attack.
That, friends, is the world's angriest chubby policeman inexplicably threatening you with what appears to be a large, goofy toy gun. I wouldn't be half surprised to see a Hello Kitty face on its side. Alas, like I said, it can kill you. Even the manufacturers of that particular version don't bother hiding it:
"Less-lethal" is to "safe" what "Adam Sandler" is to "funny."
Still, it's a shotgun that fires rounds that electrocute you, which should be more than enough to make the boners of our notoriously toys 'n' testosterone-happy police shoot right off the Brinell scale. How come every officer isn't carrying one of these lightning boomsticks, drunkenly firing voltage at passersby while screaming "BOW TO THE ODINSON, MORTALS"?
It's because shotgun-tasing people is bullshit in more than one way: Not only can it randomly kill people, it can also completely fail to have any effect on them at all during situations when it really, really needs to. Britain learned this the hard way when testing out Taser's XREP shotgun rounds. In 2010, a massive police manhunt for dangerous murderer Raoul Moat ended up taking on more sitcom-ish elements than such situations arguably should, when a final standoff between the police and Moat saw the cops fire two XREPs at the killer, connecting with one, that had literally zero effect. Three years later, when another round of testing resulted in the death of a 23-year-old kid due to a "medical episode," they realized the weapon was clearly part of some cruel cosmic joke and quietly returned it back to ACME. Sorry, I mean Taser International.
2. Tactical Pens
"Wait, what?" you say. "Pens are no toys, unless you misspell them in a hilarious way, and even then, holy shit that's inappropriate when you're talking about kids." While that is true, narratively convenient strawman reader I just made up, I'd like to point out that if you think kids aren't playing with pens, you've clearly never been in a math class full of 11-year-olds on a particularly sunny Thursday afternoon. I once ended up with a half-sleeve pen tattoo of Tic-Tac-Toe before the teacher noticed.
Remember that one kid in class who always kept poking people with his pen (yes, I'm talking about the actual writing tool, you creep) and/or attempted to draw some bullshit on their skin with it? Remember that one time he got reprimanded by the teacher for etching swastikas on Timmy's forehead again and got into such trouble that he begrudgingly abandoned his pen fixation and moved to other flavors of ADD?
Because that kid is all grown up now, and he sure as shit remembers.
At least, that's the only way I can explain the existence of the humble tactical pen, the only weapon in the world literally capable of both kicking ass and taking names. It's not just some random spy-pen-gun, either -- it's a fully functional pen that just happens to be constructed in a way that can kick your face from here to next Wednesday. Boasting features such as DNA catchers and glassbreaker tips, these stabby, airplane-quality-aluminum things are apparently a pretty huge industry. Gun manufacturers including Smith & Wesson and Colt all have a tactical pen or 16 in their product catalog. Here's a guy from UZI (yep, that UZI) demonstrating how to thoroughly wreck an armed and armored person with one:
"The guy was demonstration. The pane of glass was personal ... it fucked my wife."
That leaves just one question: Why the hell does this product exist? I understand those sturdy flashlights that you can use to club an enemy, but I can think of only two scenarios where you would both be the kind of person who owns a fucking tactical pen and have absolutely no other weaponry on your person when push comes to shove; either you're a Navy SEAL who's six weeks into his mission and literally all of his other equipment (including at least two pairs of rolled-up underwear) is already stuck in the ribcage of some enemy or another ... or you're that fucking pen-happy kid as an adult, putting finishing touches on your time machine in order to deliver a box of these fucking things to your 10-year-old self. Let's see them take your pen away from you this time.
#1. RC Vehicles With Weapons
Ah, radio-controlled toys! A decent-sized RC car was the coolest present a kid growing up in the archaic pre-widespread Internet days of the 1980s or 1990s could imagine, at least for the 15 minutes or so that it could provide entertainment.
See, that's the thing: A thing that just moves around isn't going to be any fun for your average kid unless it actually does something. That something being "attack something else." As such, ride-pimping was aplenty: While some kids were satisfied just bumping their RC cars on peoples' ankles, others started customizing theirs in a way that would in later life earn them a stint on Robot Wars or, alternately, in prison. Thanks to an ill-advised kamikaze attempt aimed at a nearby rose bush, I blew up one car with fireworks after a couple of weeks, then pretended it got lost because I was kind of a shitty kid that way.
And now that the kids from those RC warrin' decades are adults with actual budgets and shit, is it really any surprise that some of them are building on that thought?
It's not. So here's a video of a radio-controlled drone tasing a man.
Twelve-year-old me just punched the sky.
Just nonchalantly flying in, all radio-controlled-helicopter and shit, and straight-up electrocuting an intern. Let's watch that again:
I just ordered 1,000 of these for the Cracked offices, and I don't even physically work there.
Why did they do this, you ask? Why, because they'd seen these things in sci-fi movies and video games and wanted to show they were possible. That's right: People are now building remote-controlled childhood-dream-toy murderbots, just because they fucking can. Tell me we're not living in a beautiful world.
