Help me, Obi AskMe, you're my only hope...

July 5, 2006 5:21 PM

I need to find a water-powered toy rocket, like one of these, by Friday night, here in the New York metropolitan area. Any suggestions, New York AskMeFi'ers?

I've checked Kmart, Target and ToysRUs... does anyone know of some science toy store, or some place in Chinatown?

I would order online, but I'm out of time...

posted by cgs to shopping (7 comments total)

There is a large community of people who build water rockets out of things like soda bottles and flouresent light protectors and make launchers from stuff found at a local hardware store.

You have enough time to chug some soda and go to a hardware store. Bruce Berggren gives the design for a simple "Clark cable" launcher.

People will be amazed when you can use a bycicle pump to launch a coke bottle 50 feet up in the air. They will be more amazed when you add fins and some nose weight and the rocket ascends to 400 feet and on descent everybody scatters because they don't want a hole punched in their head.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 6:27 PM on July 5, 2006

There's a fairly good-sized, extremely eccentric toy store on West 72nd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam (I believe) on the north side of the street. Just get out of the 1/9 subway stop and walk towards the Dakota, you'll see it on your left.

I'm not positive that they have these, but based on my recollection of the place it's exactly the kind of thing they'd be likely to carry.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:34 PM on July 5, 2006

I don't live in NY, so I don't know if yo have them or not, but I saw water rockets at the Discovery Channel store in the Chicago area... I'd say call ahead to save yourself a trip.

You might find these guys at a Walgreens or some such store as well - they're pretty common in the kind of "junky toy" section of convenience stores around here anyway... not that the toys are junky... water rockets are fun.
posted by twiggy at 9:41 PM on July 5, 2006

Last time I bought one of those rockets it was at the Dollar Store. I'm not in NYC, but Google says there's a Dollar Store at 88 Mulberry St.
posted by Otis at 6:23 AM on July 6, 2006

Here are some more build-your-own ideas. Especially check out the YOP rocket (3rd one down). It runs on vinegar and baking soda. I had a commercial version of one of those as a kid, and spent most of my allowance on vinegar, it was so cool.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:38 AM on July 6, 2006

yay, ikkyu2!

that place was great...they had exactly what i needed, along w/ some other things. i told the lady there about how i found her store and she got a big kick out of it...she was wondering who you were: "So it was some bored guy, just hanging out online?" :-D
posted by cgs at 11:20 AM on July 6, 2006

Yep, that about sums it up.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:01 AM on July 13, 2006