A completely controversial toy by today's standards
Growing up in the 2000s, I always got to see wacky things in the toy section of the dollar stores. While cap guns weren’t specifically tied to the 2000s, I do remember these toy guns being stocked at every location. These noisemakers used to scare me as a kid with the loud popping noise they would make. The toy cap guns typically have a simple firing mechanism that involves a hammer striking a cap to create a noise and, in some cases, a small amount of smoke.
The sulfur smell these things would output gave an authentic feeling of using an actual firearm, safe enough for kids to play cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. Growing up I was always annoyed by teachers who would yell at us for chasing each other around with guns formed with our hands. We never even remotely had the thought of doing real harm to one another. Our thought process was similar to playing video games and using the finger formed guns as a prop to signify a specific role during a recess game.
I had chaotic neighborhood friends who would completely abandon use of the plastic guns, and would smash the ammo caps with rocks or hammers. Sometimes even just lining up all the little cap circles and smashing them at once, having the same appeal as 4th of july poppers.
Because of how quickly you could run out of blanks in one play session, many kids would run around with empty clips. If you were the conservative user who sparingly used the toy, you never would hand it over to the chaotic friends who would just blow the whole cap roll in one sitting. These were real great outdoor toys, but of course outclassed to Nerf guns.
Possible reason for Decline?
Criminals began to paint their guns with orange tips to camouflage guns as toys. I am led to believe parents saw news reportings like this YouTube clip and immediately confiscated their children’s toy guns to prevent confusion with law enforcement.
Toy cap guns may have become less popular and available due to changing societal attitudes towards gun play, safety concerns, the potential for mistaken identity with real firearms, legal and regulatory changes, and a shift in children’s play preferences towards electronic entertainment and educational toys. While still present in some markets, their prominence has diminished compared to previous decades.