Super Soaker

Greg Ross set out to build a better Super Soaker, and by fall of 1994, he thought he had a winner. The Oklahoma inventor said he had come up with a mega-water gun that could be fueled directly from a tap or hose and fired without being pumped. He called it the Water Rat and turned it over to his agent to shop around. But no luck. Larami, the Mount Laurel manufacturer of the wildly successful Super Soaker, gave Ross' Water Rat a thanks-but-no-thanks. So did toy-making giant Hasbro, which would later acquire Larami as a subsidiary.

Two new instruments of crime were added this week to the guns, knives and other weapons jamming a charcoal-colored evidence locker at the Pottstown Police Department. One is a seven-inch-long kitchen knife. The other is attracting more attention: It's a Super Soaker 200. The popular air-pressure water gun, capable of holding up to two quarts of water and having a shooting range of up to 50 feet, belongs to the little sister of William Welch, 17. Welch brought the 28-inch water cannon to some basketball courts behind a Pottstown elementary school Tuesday for a sneak attack on some friends.

The Super Soaker water gun is Philadelphia toymaker Larami Corporation's hottest product. But not its only one. Larami also makes dinosaurs. It's the company that brought you "Amazing Live Sea Monkeys - Just Add Water and They Come to Life. " (The sea monkeys are brine shrimp, a tiny crustacean sold in pet stores to feed fish.) But Larami knew it had a winner when it licensed the rights to a product originally developed by an Atlanta nuclear engineer named Lonnie Johnson. So successful has the Super Soaker been that a host of competitors has tried to share the market.

Johnny Ballantine was outnumbered and outgunned, but he had the high ground and he was using it well. He was one against five, and they were all bigger than he was. They had five Super Soakers - the biggest, brightest, best water guns of all time. But he had the garden hose. Six-year-old Johnny stood on the tiny ridge at the top of the lawn in front of his parents' house in the Northeast daring the others to come in and get him. Everything about his manner said: Wet me if you can. The little skirmish that broke out on the 1100 block of Devereaux Avenue across from Carnell Elementary School during the heat of Monday afternoon was one of the early battles in the water wars that threaten to flood the city this summer.

I was 9 years old when I began my first summer at Camp Shomria in Liberty, N.Y. Determined to show my fellow campers just how cool I was, I arrived packing serious heat - a Super Soaker 50 water gun (up to 50 feet of pure water power!). The second day, Billy Zuchman asked to borrow it. I was no dummy. I made him swear to give it back and not to shoot me. Billy swore up and down. I gave him the Super Soaker. He opened fire. That was 1987, 11 summers ago. He still hasn't returned that stupid gun. The first overnight camp in the United States did not have any bug juice.

Packed with teenagers, the big car tooling along Cheltenham Avenue the other evening listed dangerously each time it swerved toward the curb. And whenever the car neared the sidewalk, a weapon poked out the rear window. Whooosh went the gun - leveling a soaking spray of water at unsuspecting pedestrians in one drive-by shooting after another. The same sort of harmless summer madness prevailed at a friend's block party in Center City over the weekend. The powerful, locally made Super Soaker squirt guns were out in force, and it was open season on anything that moved - parents, in particular.

Six of the 13 teenagers arrested after a boozy party that trashed a Haddonfield home while its residents were away struck plea-bargain deals yesterday that allowed them a year's probation, but only after they recounted what they had done and promised to stay away from the family that lives in the house. The teens also had to tell the names of other youngsters who were at the March 3 party. Some testified yesterday in Camden County Family Court that from 60 to 80 people attended the bash, but none named more than a handful of fellow partygoers.

In 1982, at the age of 23, Alan Dorfman left law school at the University of Miami because it was "dry and boring. " A few months later, still unsure of what he wanted to do, he was selling artificial roses over the phone for $150 a week when a friend told him about a new import from Japan called Wall Walkers. Dorfman may not have realized it at the time, but the tiny plastic spiderlike creations would change his life. In February of the next year, Dorfman ordered several cases of a Korean version of the plastic spiders, which when thrown against a wall will walk their way back down, and a toy empire was born.

The mother of all beer bashes ended with way more than hangovers. Someone pooped on the piano. Others loaded a Super Soaker with urine and sprayed everything in sight. But what to say about the teenagers who ejaculated on stuffed animals inside the Maple Avenue home whose oblivious owners were away for the weekend? When did youthful experimentation become so . . . depraved? That was March, when Haddonfield was starting to realize that things are not as they had always been in the affluent South Jersey suburb, which is like so many others in the region.

There was a time I could walk into most of the bars in picturesque Lambertville, just over the bridge from New Hope, and greet people in the way immortalized on Cheers. I knew their faces and their names. After all, we were also together in homeroom, gym class, and geometry. They were my high school classmates, and we were able to avoid Pennsylvania's minimum drinking age (21) by driving just 10 miles to New Jersey, where the minimum was 18 - and even that sometimes seemed negotiable.

There was a time I could walk into most of the bars in picturesque Lambertville, just over the bridge from New Hope, and greet people in the way immortalized on Cheers. I knew their faces and their names. After all, we were also together in homeroom, gym class, and geometry. They were my high school classmates, and we were able to avoid Pennsylvania's minimum drinking age (21) by driving just 10 miles to New Jersey, where the minimum was 18 - and even that sometimes seemed negotiable.

Six of the 13 teenagers arrested after a boozy party that trashed a Haddonfield home while its residents were away struck plea-bargain deals yesterday that allowed them a year's probation, but only after they recounted what they had done and promised to stay away from the family that lives in the house. The teens also had to tell the names of other youngsters who were at the March 3 party. Some testified yesterday in Camden County Family Court that from 60 to 80 people attended the bash, but none named more than a handful of fellow partygoers.

The mother of all beer bashes ended with way more than hangovers. Someone pooped on the piano. Others loaded a Super Soaker with urine and sprayed everything in sight. But what to say about the teenagers who ejaculated on stuffed animals inside the Maple Avenue home whose oblivious owners were away for the weekend? When did youthful experimentation become so . . . depraved? That was March, when Haddonfield was starting to realize that things are not as they had always been in the affluent South Jersey suburb, which is like so many others in the region.

Greg Ross set out to build a better Super Soaker, and by fall of 1994, he thought he had a winner. The Oklahoma inventor said he had come up with a mega-water gun that could be fueled directly from a tap or hose and fired without being pumped. He called it the Water Rat and turned it over to his agent to shop around. But no luck. Larami, the Mount Laurel manufacturer of the wildly successful Super Soaker, gave Ross' Water Rat a thanks-but-no-thanks. So did toy-making giant Hasbro, which would later acquire Larami as a subsidiary.

The Mount Laurel manufacturer of the Super Soaker squirt gun is dripping with anger over what it says is a blatant knockoff of its product. Larami Ltd., a Hasbro subsidiary that also makes several Nerf products, filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Friday, alleging trademark infringement of the Super Soaker by the Odd Job Trading Corp. of Columbus, Ohio, and distributor Oxford Products of North Jersey. Al Davis, executive vice president of Larami, said a Larami employee noticed an imitation Super Soaker at a South Jersey discount store owned by Odd Job about 10 days ago. According to the lawsuit, the squirt gun was being marketed as the Super Squirt and was distributed by Oxford Products.

Stand at 12th and Vine Streets and, at first blush, you won't find much to look at. Just another hard-luck warehouse district. But wander about a few blocks, knock on a few doors, and you will see there is more to this neighborhood that Mayor Street envisions as the future home for the Phillies' new ballpark. Here, for instance, are the city's last hat factory and the birthplace of the Super Soaker. There are blocks of small businesses, some diners, an occasional home. Check the property records and you uncover not last-minute speculators or the mayor's friends, as cynics might expect, but longtime deed holders.

I was 9 years old when I began my first summer at Camp Shomria in Liberty, N.Y. Determined to show my fellow campers just how cool I was, I arrived packing serious heat - a Super Soaker 50 water gun (up to 50 feet of pure water power!). The second day, Billy Zuchman asked to borrow it. I was no dummy. I made him swear to give it back and not to shoot me. Billy swore up and down. I gave him the Super Soaker. He opened fire. That was 1987, 11 summers ago. He still hasn't returned that stupid gun. The first overnight camp in the United States did not have any bug juice.

It's soil, not dirt. And youngsters at Blue Bell Elementary School got to pick at it, knead it, rub it, and actually walk in it without an adult yelling that it was sticking to the bottom of their shoes. After all, what more fitting way to honor what has become Earth Week than to stand in a 5-foot-deep pit and touch the earth? A bulldozer made possible last week's journey not quite to the center of the Earth - more like half a story down - so students could stand eye-level with three distinct layers of soil.

In 1982, at the age of 23, Alan Dorfman left law school at the University of Miami because it was "dry and boring. " A few months later, still unsure of what he wanted to do, he was selling artificial roses over the phone for $150 a week when a friend told him about a new import from Japan called Wall Walkers. Dorfman may not have realized it at the time, but the tiny plastic spiderlike creations would change his life. In February of the next year, Dorfman ordered several cases of a Korean version of the plastic spiders, which when thrown against a wall will walk their way back down, and a toy empire was born.

One thing you have to give Sea Monkey merchant Al Dorfman credit for is knowing when to leave. And the other thing is for pursuing his dream, even though he wasn't quite sure what it was. And that's how Dorfman, 34, a law school escapee, came to make his living finding toys to miniaturize and attach to key chains. That and hawking Sea Monkeys. Remember them? Put some powdered brine-shrimp eggs in a little plastic container filled with water. Add a teeny bit of food and watch those critters grow to all of a three-quarters of an inch.