Dizzying laws and indifferent authorities aside, chances are you've noticed that every store from your local Publix to the neighborhood Target is selling fireworks (legally, "sparklers") this time of year.
But do the value packs and "safe and sane" choices give you a decent bang for your buck, or will your money literally just go up in smoke? We bought a few and decided to give them a try, in case you don't want to risk that first-degree misdemeanor by lighting the big boys.
The first thing we tried were some no-name, Made-in-China spinners, right, that went for a buck a bag at every tent we visited. For a pack of six, we were treated to a blaze of sparks, then some rich color as they had an incendiary conniption on the ground. Not bad for about 17 cents each.
The big purchase was the TNT Mega Storm 50-piece assortment, left, ($49.99, although they count the punks in the box as part of those 50 pieces; there's an even larger one for $100). This thing was massive, with several decent-sized tubes with names like Hot Shot, Starfire, Razzle Dazzle, Tiger Shark and Golden Shower.
While these fountains all spewed sparks up to 6 feet or more in gold, green and red hues — and threw some pops and whistles in here and there — they generally all did the same thing, and quickly became tiresome. They were the Mexican food of fireworks, using the same four or five ingredients to make a couple dozen different entrees.
Unless you have several children who all want to light their own fountain (because really, who waits until kids are 12 to let them blow things up?), there's no need to have two dozen of these things. TNT also sells a pack of four of these for a mere $10 that serves the same purpose nicely.
There were two surprises in the Mega Storm pack, however: The June Bugs, which were about an inch long and spouted plenty of sparks and double snaps that belied their diminutive size; and small fountains named after dinosaurs: the Stegosaurus, right, the Tyrannosaurus and the Shantugosaurus, whatever that is. These pocket-sized monsters packed quite a wallop, shooting plenty high and popping just enough to let you know they were there, without annoying the neighbors. The best part? The three dinos can be purchased in their own pack at the store for a measly $2.
A cake by Glorious called Blue Ice, below, rang in at $8.95, but was a miserable disappointment. It behaved much like the other small fountains, but fired off blue patterns sequentially. It was a whole lot of not much for that kind of money. One that was worth the cash was the $6.95 Spring Blossom, bottom right, billed as a long-lasting fountain cone, which lived up to the claim. The cone shot up nice and high, burned for a good long while and emitted bursts of sparks in a circle a few feet wide. It easily outdid the larger TNT fountains.
Novelty items worked out quite well. The ubiquitous tanks covered in Chinese kanji, left, did their jobs well, and with rolling wheels and cannon spewing sparks, they were equally at home racing one another or facing off, duel-style. Not bad for a couple bucks apiece.
The $1 Mighty Max spinner, right, with its large dual fins, caused some head-scratching as to what it did, but once the wick was aglow and the palm-sized pill was on the ground, it hopped and spun like a thing possessed, firing sparks in a surprisingly wide circumference. And a $1.50 Friendship Pagoda, bottom left, was a delight, whipping in place on a plastic stud before shooting out multi-colored sparks and finally popping open to reveal the namesake structure.
The lesson? You can't really replace quality with quantity. If you need something that will please a 5-year-old, any of these will do, but don't take out a second mortgage buying the ultra-huge assortment when a few tried-and-true faves will do just fine.
But don't buy the ash snakes. Those things are just as lame as we remember them.
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