The most important snowball fight of my life happened in the winter of 1986. I was in the fourth grade.
A huge storm had pounded our town all weekend long. Monday morning we discovered that whoever plowed my school’s parking lot had pushed all the snow to the far end, to the edge of the soccer field. It was a mountain. A group of us transformed it into a castle with not one but two escape slides. Below us, another group of kids began building their own defences and armoury. Come lunchtime, it was on – a battle that proved to be as epic as everyone knew it would be after we finished whatever was in our A-Team lunch boxes.
It was proof that, with the right mix of snow, mischief and imagination, anything seemed possible.
We didn’t have any of the snowball gear that now lines toy store shelves, although I’m sure we would have loved to get our hands on it: launchers, makers, throwers, crossbows, blasters of seemingly every kind imaginable. Every since Wham-O launched the trend less than a decade ago, these products have been hitting the market like freezing temperatures hit Winnipeg in January.
As I approach 40, I view them with what is admittedly an unfairly grumpy old man attitude: “When I was a kid, a ‘snowball maker’ was our hands and this right here was a snowball launcher” as I hold my arm up and shake it angrily. But that’s not why you will quickly grow tired of most of these toys – most of which simply fail to live up to their exciting promises.
Wham-O, the toy company that popularized the hula hoop and the Frisbee, among other classics, unveiled the Snowball Blaster in 2008. It’s essentially a slingshot, but the plastic housing makes it look like a large, futuristic gun. A big, blue photon blaster dreamed up with good times and corporate profit in mind.
“The initial inspiration for the Arctic Force Snowball Blaster was more of a challenge from our executive team at first. They asked: ‘How do you make snowball fighting more fun?’” Dennis Claussen, vice-president of creative operations at Wham-O told me in an e-mail.
Its success led to the launch of the entire Arctic Force line, which currently includes eight different products for making and firing snowballs.
Imitators, copycats and competitors abound.
It’s easy to see why.
From the day I brought home the Snowball Blaster, my two kids asked me over and over each day when would we get to play with it. We’re talking breakfast straight through to dinner.
Being in snow-starved Toronto, we finally had to track down snow outside a hockey arena – admittedly not the best, but still.
The tension on the slingshot was way too much for my oldest kid to shoot a snowball more than three feet. The box promised it could fire up to 80 feet – I couldn’t get a snowball to fly more than 30 feet, max. Granted, I’m not a large man. But I’m stronger than most children.
We both tired of it after just a few minutes. Besides, it was starting to make my arm hurt.
The Wham-O Snow Tracball, with a curve that looks like something from a game of Jai alai, had promise.
“Make and throw the perfect snowball!” the box says. Is the perfect snowball just slightly bigger than a golf ball? And one that disintegrates mid-flight? Again, it wasn’t the best snow, but it still disappointed.
The SnoFling snowball thrower has an obvious appeal to a lazy, aging man. It’s basically a stick with a cup on the end. You push the cup into snow, pull it out and whip the stick, theoretically sending a snowball at your target. But every time I tried it, I only managed to spray snow. If you’re interested in misting your enemies, this is for you.
But if your snow fortress is under attack and you need to mount a serious defence, you’re better off with something else.
The SnoFling would have been chucked aside pretty quickly during the second most important snowball fight of my life, which happened when I was in high school. Mostly it was the timing of it: When everyone was trying so hard to be cynical and cool, a large group of us spent the afternoon trying to bean one another like we were kids again – proof that snowballs will always have the power to bring out your inner kid.
It’s a proposition that has been proven to me many times since. I’ve seen grandmothers patting snowballs with a devilish grin in their eyes, ready to peg little ones with a gentle underhand toss. I’ve seen guys who wear suits to work huddle up at the park to see who can splatter a stop sign from 50 feet away.
Full on battles might not break out any more, but there will always be snowballs in winter.
“I can’t imagine something that just packs snowballs for you would make a snowball fight any more fun than if you’re just packing your own snowballs,” says Peter Gray, a psychologist in Boston who specializes in play.
He is wrong.
The snowball maker we brought with us to the rink should be part of every battle. It looks like a pair of tongs with a half cup on each side that you press together in snow to form a perfect snowball. Various brands sell multiple versions of it.
I made 32 snowballs in one minute with it. (I had my daughter time me.) I guarantee that if you made that many snowballs with your hands in 60 seconds you’d be too tired afterward to throw them.
When it finally snows here in Toronto, I’m going to show the whole bag of snow toys to the neighbourhood kids. If they like the shooters and snowball makers and launchers enough to come outside and have their own battles with my kids, then who am I to judge?
“The biggest trick to getting kids outdoors is to get parents so that they’re not afraid to send their kids outdoors, and secondly to get other kids outdoors because kids want to play with other kids,” Gray says.
There are video games to keep kids indoors and liability concerns have led to bans on snowball fights at some schools – and companies will keep trying to sell new ways of perfecting this age-old experience.
But there will always be a timeless satisfaction in nailing something with a snowball, whatever you use to do it.