I've had the pleasure of finding these small single shot tubes called Sammy Shots. They are damn loud for being about the size of a small fountain, easily louder than a standard sized artillery shell. I would guess it has about as much flash powder as an M-80... When I set one off in my backyard I hear the boom reverberate for several seconds.

So, now they are pulling these things off the shelf and replacing them with imitation ones. No more boom, just some shitty sparks and whistles.

Theres one way to tell the difference though, the good ones have a red plastic base, whereas the new shitty ones have a black base.

I guess I'm lucky this thing has slipped through the cracks this long.

I'm just passing this info on as it may be helpful to some of you.

Have a safe 4th everyone. Don't need anymore reasons for the firework nazis to make more shit illegal.

Yup, these were defintely overloaded. They are also sold under the name "noisy boys". I've got these ones this year called "double whammys" that are just double break sammy shots.

The place I buy my fireworks from stocks a shitload of rewrapped 1.3g items disguised as consumer fireworks. This year I bought a 10 shot salute cake, a 25 shot thunderking, some salute shells disguised as "Small Festival Balls", and some m-80s wrapped as ground blooms. Last year he had 2" Lidu Blue Thunder salute shells with quickmatch fuses, in a plain cardboard box with a plain cardboard tube. Made me feel like a badass busting those out haha.

It was funny, the first time I purchased "under the counter" shit from there, I figured I was going to have to be discreet and hint my way into gaining his trust, but I just asked "can you show me some of the good stuff?", and he took me on a tour of the store pointing out everything "good".

Now if you'll excuse me, I can hear people lighting fireworks outside, I'm gunna go shut them down

Actually, I forgot I have some pictures of some of these items. These are all from my 4th of July stash two years ago.

The 2" salutes link

A bunch of stuff. The red white and blue American Salute cake, and the Colorful Whirlwind cakes were all salutes. The Strobing palms was a normal cake, but every shot was flash broken. The rockets are from Germany, and all the writing on them was in German. They were double break, and the breaks were very nice. The salutes disguised as small festival balls I was talking about, and some other 2" shells. And, ta da, Sammy Shots! link

Heh... Yeah I think these people have a knack for spotting "true pyros"

So you're implying that the Sammy Shots may have been 1.3G, and passed off as consumer?

I just lit one of the "counterfeit" SS's and it whistled on its way up and had like 4 or 5 small breaks comparable to a firecracker, rather than the huge boom. Not even worth the money IMO. Theres a few others though that are pretty much the same: American Salutes, and Spring Thunder.... I think its funny how none of them list a name of the manufacturer... Hmmm.... seems kinda shady to me.

Just in case I bought like 15 boxes of these if they really are being discontinued.

In the US no state or india reservation can legally sell fireworks with more than 50mg of FP. So unless you where buying from some guy who modified them himself the where just well made. So if those where legal the contain about a 60th of the FP of a M-80.

Aerial Salutes are still legal in Canada and the limit is 130mg. So they are far more powerful than your typical legal ground salute (which are illegal here)

Well that's the point man, they're not legal. Shit like these sneak through the checkpoints and make it onto various retailers store shelves everywhere. It's like hit or miss looking for items like this.


Are you sure? From what I've heard/seen Canada has some pretty hefty aerial salute items, like waay better than what's legal in the US. And the legal limit in the states is 120mg, which is barley louder than a firecracker that high up in the air.

Maybe not then. Ours are frighteningly loud, and are often given names like "Aerial Bomb" "Cherry Bomb" etc. The "shell" is a little cylinder of cardboard with clay endplugs and a fuse as a timer. I don't know how much FP is in there then.

I wish I had a sound recording to do one of these Sammy Shots justice. All I can say is whenever I light one everyone's like damn thats loud, or the older people say those sound like the M80s they had as a kid.

Is it possible one is a consumer version, and the other loud one is a 1.3G? Or maybe they're being brought down from Canada?

I'll get a picture uploaded, of the two different kinds...

LINK

The black one is shitty- Whistles with a few small breaks

The red one is just plain loud

Why don't you people just make some flash powder and make your own salutes? Much cheaper, louder, brighter, and overall better...

I hate you all.
Living in the USA would be so easier... Can't find any KClO4 here, neither fuse, and I haven't even look for Al powder!