For handing stuff out to kids, I don’t like candy so like to make small toys. In the past I’ve made rubber band planes. What to do this year?

Perhaps this rubber band shooter I’ve been thinking of. You put a small elastic from the front to the back and push it up the back to shoot it.

It’s better than a water pistol since it you can shoot the elastic back and forth.

I just wiped a few up and they work great with #12 elastic.

They’re easy to make too. This is much better than the last time I did Halloween stuff and I gave out rubber band planes. That got a little expensive. I eventually designed my own rubber band plane but it’s still a bit complex for random kids…

We used to make these when we were kids. It was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time looking for the right piece of wood and rubber bands. Eventually we deployed clothes pins as triggers and we had to figure out how to shape the wood. Then you need to figure out fastening of the clothes-pin. Was a great problem solving activity since resources were sparse.

Nostalgia aside there’s another interesting dialogue that this could open. There’s this whole maker movement thing with 3D printers and guns. I think it’s media fluff since people who really want to make real guns will find better tools among traditional garage tools.  Media depiction of the maker movement and 3D printing is very misleading for the public.

A third thing I find interesting about this is sensitivity and dislike towards guns. I’m one of them. I’d love to hear peoples’ opinion on this. I know there will be a crowd of people who may object to this but still have a water pistol and video games full of blood and guts, not to mention the amount of junk TV they and kids may consume. I think this is a great subject.

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Published October 3, 2014