WaterWar.net

First a little backstory: I first got hooked on water guns back in late spring/early summer 2002, when my mother brought my brothers and I a bunch of squirt pistols. As a kid I would always be quick to get really into something, and then lose interest a couple months (or years in some cases) later. Water guns were no exception, and we accumulated a vast number of them in a short amount of time. Most of them were squirt pistols, but at one point I picked up a Storm 760, my first pressurized water gun. Now, there was this kid living across the street (who moved long ago) whom my brothers and I would have water fights with. He was the proud owner of a CPS Splashzooka, which obviously overpowered anything that we had, and looked like the biggest water gun in the world to us youngsters. Naturally, we wanted revenge, so we looked up Super Soakers on the internet, and picked out the biggest, baddest models we could find (the Monsters). Soon after we went to Toys-R-Us and came home with some formidable water weaponry. I got a Monster X, "chief" got a CPS 2100, and "AMBUSH" got a MD 6000. (Later on we also brought a 4100 and an MD 5000.) We really wanted a MXL but there weren't any on the shelves. We were then able to rule the neighborhood. It was an awesome feeling.

The reason I am posting this is because I found a couple old pictures of us back in our earliest water warfare days, which I figure I'll share with ya'll to prove that I've been doing this a lot longer than my join date suggests. :p

So here's SEAL as a little kid. The MX was almost as big as I was, haha. Who says big CPS guns are too heavy for little kids? 'Course, I had to rely heavily on the strap (which gave me neck burns), but the point is that the kids (in the 8-10 range) people talk about who "can't lift my 2500" must've been pretty wimpy.


And here are the young Catskill Mountain SEALs. The team was officially founded in 2007, but this was kind of like the predecessor to it. We spent our childhood ruling the neighborhood; how did you spend yours?


Unfortunately those were the only photos I could find. I took pictures of them with the digital camera, but they don't look as good as they do in real life.

We had those guns for a number of years, but we lost interest in water guns for a while and my parents eventually got rid of them. (Still haven't forgiven them! :p) I think some of them were broken anyway though. In 2007 we got a Hasbro catalogue with their new blasters listed in it, which rekindled my interest and I've been at it ever since. I didn't find the online community until 2010 though. I still would really like to get a hold of a 2002 MX again, but they seem to be rather hard to find and expensive when found. If anybody has one that they'd be willing to sell to me for less than $50, let me know! (I'm not interested in the original 2000 version, just the '02 one like I had.)

PURE. AWESOME. NESS!

Thanks for sharing these pics! When *I* was that age, we were still a long way before the Super Soaker even existed.

When I was little, I didn't really have internet, so I had to just find something. The only thing I found at the store was a Max-D 2000, and I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

My dad used to go to thrift stores all the time, so I ended up also finding a Max-D 3000 and an XP 220. As a result, I then assumed that pretty much all Super Soakers looked like this.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that the Monster X got thrown away?

^Yeah, like I said in the first post, all of the old guns I had were thrown out probably around '05 or '06. However like I also mentioned, many of them were broken because we didn't know any better and left them outside. I mean obviously if I still had them my brothers and I wouldn't have gone into Downpour '11 armed with a 2700, 1200, and Vanquisher/270.

I remember a particularly awesome water fight that chief and I had back then; this girl who used to live across the street (also moved a long time ago; now there are mostly old people in my neighborhood) came over one day with a squirt pistol and challenged us to a battle. I lugged out the MX and chief used the 4100, and man I can still see the look of shock on her face (this can also be taken really, really wrong if worded in a certain way). We ended up loaning her the 2100 because otherwise it would've been a slaughter. We fought until we were all completely and totally drenched. Fun times. We had a lot of crazy adventures back then; I kind of miss those days of being carefree and irresponsible, haha.

I spent my childhood wishing I had rivals to fight while patrolling the street with my helix

SEAL wrote:^Yeah, like I said in the first post, all of the old guns I had were thrown out probably around '05 or '06.

Oops. lol.

I guess I'm at a stop when it comes to local water wars and recruitment. It really doesn't happen anymore, and I haven't went around going up to random strangers in the summer asking if they'd want to join a water war lol. There's something special about those nostalgic local wars we all have, but for most of us, looks like those days are long gone.

As for me, I only go back to 2006, and all those pics are all over iSoaker and HBWW anyways.

Wow, that's awesome. Back to the days of pictures that you actually had to scan.

If I were to guess, my water warfare carrier began around 2001, I was at my friend Cory's house and we took a break from our normal playing in the sandbox with Tonka trucks and decided to have a water fight. Now I was expecting to battle with squirt guns or maybe buckets (I had battled with those before), but he had CPS guns. I don't remember what I used, or what he had, but I remember one of them was a CPS 1000 because it was white with blue tanks. We fought each other for a while before eventually making our way out to the front yard. Around that time, the kid across the street (he was probably 12 or 13) saw us and decided he wanted to join the fight. I still remember how Cory and I were fighting each other when the kid slowly walked across the street carrying a Monster X and waring sunglasses (though the second part my not be true judging by how his face looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in my memory). When we spotted him we took off down the sidewalk and he drenched us. When I got home I asked for Super Soakers for X-Mass. Come Christmas I got my first real water guns, two XP 270s and two XP 310s. I really wanted CPS guns, but looking back it is probably good that I didn't get any as they never would have lasted till now (and I would hate myself for it) and I could barely lift the 310s let alone Cory's mid sized CPS guns. For some reason though I always tried to duel wield the 310s despite the fact that I had trouble lifting even one up to aim.

I'm pretty sure I have my 2000 edition MX in storage down the road, but you said you wanted a 2002 ed. If I ever come across a 2002 ed. for cheap, consider it yours.

^Yeah, that's what you said about that MK1 2000 with the ruptured bladder. Doesn't matter now 'cause I got a 2000 last year and I wouldn't have time to fix a busted bladder anyway.

And then realized upon checking it was an utter mess of existing and non-existing parts

Back on topic, what were the pictures originally taken with? it's really cool digging things like this up every now and again.

I have no idea what the pictures were originally taken with. My parents probably threw out the camera years ago when they got their first digital one. Along with these two photos, I also found about a hundred more, though none of them had water guns in them.