The Super Soaker celebrates it's 20th Anniversary
Hard to believe the most stream intensive water gun is now two decades old. But the Super Soaker is having a birthday! Created in 1982 by Dr. Lonnie Johnson, a literal rocket scientist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was looking to create a fun, safe water toy in his spare time, the Super Soaker didn’t reach the market until 1989. And when it did, it soaked the competition.
And while the competition used battery powered motors to pump water in a fight, they almost always ran out of juice quickly or the streams were simply too paltry to have any lasting effect. The Super Soaker – which Johnson created after an epiphany while working on a heat pump for the Galileo space probe – relied on good old fashioned elbow grease to pump air pressure into a water reservoir. The result was a steady torrent and a long distance range.
Dr. Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker
After trying to manufacture the Super Soaker on his own and finding out how costly such a venture could be, Dr. Johnson licensed his design to Entertech, Johnson’s competitor. After they went out of business, Johnson’s Super Soaker ended up with Larami products, which eventually got swallowed up by Hasbro. And the rest is water fighting history. With dozens of different designs and improvements over the year, the Super Soaker has never been more popular.
What’s Dr. Johnson doing now? Well, he’s got his own design and manufacturing company which is working not only on new Super Soaker designs, but also Nerf Guns and compressed air rockets for Estes. And with its 20th Anniversary, Super Soaker has released a special edition iSoaker, based on the original Super Soaker design.
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