In the last edition of Tat Tuesday, while talking about the Yak Bak toys, I mentioned Power Penz. It was my intention to do a full post on the pens themselves but I hit a bit of a snag. There isn't that much information available on them. I can't find much about the history of the toy series but I did find a lot of pictures. So I figured I would just take a look at some of them and give my impressions on them. I did find an old blog that was dedicated to Power Penz. To be honest I did appropriate a few of the pictures from that blog. Anyway on to the good stuff.
They only information I could find on the Power Penz is that they were created by Ralph Osterhout, who also created the Yak Bak, and were released by Yes! Entertainment.
Let's start of with the Crossbow Power Penz. It is a simple Nerf styled blaster.
To fire the missile you pull the end of the pen and release. It has two elastic band on the side that snaps the end back into place and pushes air forward to the projectile. This fires the green dart. The package states that the dart will fly 20 feet. But as you can see from the video above that depends on how you fire the thing. This is pretty damn cool.
I can only assume that the Crossbow Power Penz was very popular. I have found 3 different versions of it during my research.
Actually, on further inspection this Power Penz refers to itself as the Rocket Slam. However it has the same type of ammo so whatever.
Projectiles were a mainstay of the line. Such as the one above. It is a much slimmer than the Rocket Slam or Crossbow. I can't find a video of it in action but a pen that shoots anything is cool.
What's better than shooting a dart? Shooting a dart that holds a secret message. This Power Penz does just that. It has a flip up sight and a compartment that holds 10 sheets of paper. I'm not sure how well this shoots but the flip up sight is a cool addition.
Not all of the Power Penz that fired projectiles were meant to be aimed at something or more likely someone. Some of them just sent things flying. Such as the one above. The Power Penz Orbits. I'm not sure how far the green helicopter blades fly but it looks like it would be fun.
Let's move away from Power Penz that shoot things. As time went on the Power Penz got more complicated. Take the Rim Shot for instance. It goes from what you see above to...
A miniature basket ball game. How awesome is that? So fucking Awesome. That's how awesome it is. I mean just look at that. Imagine being in class and having a few minutes to kill. What do you do? Take out you Rim Shot and play some ball. This isn't the only Power Penz like this.
To this. A full on Football field goal game. If there was one more of these you could have you own mini carnival.
Oh, wait. There is a third one. The Power Penz Free kick. Which once again goes from this...
To this. That's it. I need to track down all three of these so that I can have my own miniature carnival.
Hell I'll even track down the Power Penz Hockey while I'm at it. It doesn't open into a mini carnival game but it's pretty cool none the less.
There were also a bunch of Power Penz with electronic add ons. Which ranged from FM radios to little electronic games. Not nearly as cool as the others but worth mentioning none the less.
Power Penz even made a few WWE themed items. If only they made one that transformed into a miniature wrestling ring. That would have been awesome. Alas that was not to be.
For some reason Power Penz also made a few Magic themed toys. These Power Penz were able to perform one trick. Compared to some of the other Penz this is pretty lame.
I can't decide on whether the Power Penz Doodler is cool or not. It is a pen that has a little Etch-A-Sketch built into it. I'm torn. There is nothing about this that screams awesome nor is there anything really wrong with it.
Finally we have, what may be the coolest of toy in the line, the Power Penz Laser Shots. Pens that could be used to play Laser Tag with. Think about that. While it doesn't fire a physical projectile it is something that you can play with in class. You and your buddy can take shots at each other all day and no one would be the wiser. That is the ultimate in cool.
I never had any Power Penz as a kid but after looking at some of these I might just have to track some down. Considering they are still available on Amazon and Ebay that won't be as hard as you would imagine. If you feel the same way check out the links below. Also the sight I mentioned above has a few Power Penz I didn't mention. So check it out. If you want some more info on some of the Power Penz I did talk about, you can find it here.
Amazon
Ebay
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