Vintage Cracker Balls

[displayfireworks1]

In a prior post, I requested whoever has these vintage throw down Cracker Balls from back in the day, if they could send me pictures that would be great. Well, someone did. In addition to the pictures, they also sent some commentary. Note who the manufacture is! They continue to be a well-respected Japanese display shell manufacture to this day. As far as I know finding these are a rare find. I am not sure if Cracker Balls are the unofficial name of these or not.
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Of those crackers balls. The label was slapped on to comply with CPSC after several injuries. Apparently this was the only way to prevent an outright ban on them at the time but I think importers just gave up and stopped importing them altogether. This example must be one of a few that are actually within labeling compliance. They had a lot of realgar in them owing for the risk of arsenic poisoning on top of teeth being cracked or ejected from those poor kids!

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[KDirk]

Dave, thanks for posting the photos (and to whoever supplied them to begin with). Now I can sort of see why they might have been mistaken for candy. What's sort of funny is that I was in Home Depot just before the 4th and they had a display of novelty items, including "pull pops" (with the string) and snap n pops. The latter came in an assortment pack of multiple colors. This was the first time I'd ever seen them with anything other than the dingy white rice paper wrapping, so I picked up a couple of boxes for my nieces and nephews to play around with (while supervised, of course).

[halk]

Many dozen brand names, packaging, and configurations of these miniature Japanest torpedoes we call cap balls. We shot them by the hundreds in our slingshots. I think they were made with silver fulminate. Don't confuse them with the much larger round or tubular domestic torpedoes made with potassium chlorate, antinomy trisulfide, magnesium oxide, and aluminum. I think they went out in 1966.