UK FIREWORK REVIEW NEWSLETTER

No.19 [31/12/00]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

With Xmas a dim memory, we look forward to the NEW YEAR, another excuse to light the blue touch paper! We wish all our readers a very happy and prosperous New Year and above all, a SAFE New Year firework experience, whether you're attending a display or firing one.

OO-ER MORE MAJOR NEWS ON THE FIREWORK FRONT!

In this newsletter:

- The UKFR is INDEPENDENT AGAIN. That's right folks, we no longer sell fireworks!
- The UKFR is RELAUNCHED! Ok we had to do something to see in the New Year. If you like fireworks and like the Firework Review I think you'll like the latest developments!
- More reviews than you can shake a stick at, including the latest SHELLSCAPE and BLUE MOON fireworks and a look at GLOW NECKLACES and LASERS!
- Reader questions, answers and feedback.


INDEPENDENCE DAY:

We are now "independent" again! We had a great Guy Fawkes with our commercial venture "Fujiyama Fireworks" which supplied many "Best Buys" and other great fireworks to our readers. Although this was a commercial success (and a lot of fun), we have decided not to continue selling fireworks. This is because our main aim is to continue the "UK Firework Review" website, and the foundation of it's success was impartiality and independence.

Well, we proved beyond any doubt that a commercial concern AND impartiality can work, and we've had many encouraging messages and calls about our services. However, it was a difficult juggling act on one hand offering a true impartial and consumer-led service, and on the other a commercial company. Time constraints also meant it was impossible to concentrate on running both sites effectively. Ultimately we have had to make a decision, to go fully commercial or revert back to the original form. We've decided on the latter, having built up the UKFR as one of the leading and most useful firework sites on the web we did not want to see this slip away for the sake of a fast-buck.

So, for the record we are now "non-commercial" again, meaning we have no connection to the firework trade itself other than as a buyer of fireworks for our own displays (ie. just like readers). It won't affect our reviews which were always impartial (and this year supported by film and an independent reviewer anyway) but it should prove beyond any doubt our genuine aims with fireworks and the website.

To celebrate this change, we have RELAUNCHED the UK Firework Review!


NEW YEAR, NEW SITE!

We've completely changed the UK Firework Review. What we've done is merged the best of the old UKFR site with the Fujiyama site, so all the hard work building the world's best firework safety and advice guides has not gone to waste. In effect it's the content of the UKFR with the professional look of Fujiyama. And that's the last time we'll mention the "F" word because from now on, we're independent and don't sell fireworks!

We've listened to YOUR feedback on a number of issues. Thanks to everyone who has written to us, we appreciate your comments and the fact so many people are enjoying the site is the main reason we've committed ourselves to it for the foreseeable future.


WHAT'S NEW:

Before we take a look at the site changes, let's look at the new content...

NEW REVIEWS:

A whole heap of new fireworks have been reviewed: Golden Waterfall, Alien Offensive, Alien Spiders, Comet Candle, Nova Galaxy, Red Sky, Proton Bomb, Double Thunder, Atomic, Shell Shock, M66 Cyber Mine, Medusa, Achilles, Top Gun, Top Shot, Zeus, Spartacus, Thor, and Trojan.

In addition, our new section "non fireworks" takes a look at GLOW NECKLACES, a £5 laser pointer keyring and Pete Beckett reviews and photographs a sub-£50 laser crab in action.

NEW SECTIONS:

Our re-launch sees a few new sections. The massive illustrated safety guide written for our commercial site has been ported over, minus any commercial plugs. As always this and the whole UKFR is on-line for you to read for free. We have also ported over the huge display advice sections too. This has almost doubled the text content of the site.

We've written a new "frequently asked questions" (faq) page, based on your questions over the last two years and hopefully this will speed up common enquiries we get every week from new readers.

OTHER CHANGES:

We have ditched the old "three frames" layout to a full screen normal page, so hopefully navigation will be easier. Now the options are along the top AND bottom, and depending on what section you are in, the menu may expand to include more options.

In response to reader requests, reviews have been split down into more sections, eg. "other" has been replaced with "mines", "wheels", "fountains" and "other". The two biggest sections, cakes and rockets, have been split into "under £10" and "over £10" pages to make browsing a bit easier. And, we've improved the review header plus added "NEW" logos to new reviews both in the text and the menu entry.

The SUPPLIER section gets a major overhaul as we open it up to ANY advertiser for the first time. This is far better than "recommended" companies (which was a short list because once we found a good company we stuck with it) because we hope to build up a comprehensive list of the UK's best suppliers. This will give readers the best choice possible for sourcing fireworks.

Two reader pictures have been added to the intro screen. Ian Stewart captures two Bright Star fireworks in action, in two superb pictures. Thanks Ian.


READER FEEDBACK:

In our last newsletter, Eddie P asked: "Do you know anyone who has fired: Armageddon 500 Shot, Ion Storm 200 Shot or Ion Thunder 200 Shot. I would be interested in the effects/duration and perceived value for money"

You replied:

". I did have an Armageddon and a Thundering Ion. The trouble is as firer I did not time the fireworks, but my wife kept a sort of score card of the fireworks and she has put 3 "stars" next to the Armageddon and one next to the Ion with the word "noisy".

The Ion was certainly "white". 200 shots of silver tracers with a flash and a brocade burst at about 30 - 40 feet high, maybe higher. Very noisy with each one giving a very loud bang. I remember there was loud applause and one particular comment of "....Bloody Hell ...." from one of the family.

The Armageddon was my finale, and what a finale. It followed on from the Atomic Warlord. Although the tubes were only about 5" in height, this thing gave a surprising amount of varied effects. At first I though it would not last long as the first set of shots (out of 500) rapidly fired like a machine gun, then it slowed to about 3 a second, until a final burst. There were flash reports, especially in the first burst, plenty of palm type burst in all colours, a few very high brocades, whistles, crackles, an effect that I saw from a few of the other
cakes of a burst that then spirals silver traces in mid air, then a final brocade of many air bursts. This got 3 stars from the wife. There was oohs and aahs all through this thing."

Other good ones : Mars Attack rated highly, Wrath Of The Gods was " .... a cracker ....", and the Seismic Strike, this one had the spinning silver things along with very load air bombs." - Ian Stewart.

Many thanks Ian, your Armageddon description is actually ten times more useful than Bright Star's OWN trade description (remind me to recount the story of how I called BS one day to ask about one of their fireworks....).

Also:

"I used an 'Armageddon 500 Shot' cake. Its a mixture of bangs whistles, crackles colours, everything really, It also has a slight finalle at the end, not as rushed as a SI 1, but it caused a great response from the crowd, and kept going for ages, definitely a cool cake, I will be getting two next year! .. 500 shots for £40 is pretty good if you ask me!" and "Its a long firework, however! I timed it at 2 minutes 30seconds (and there is no pause) - Ed.

And "I have tried the Armageddon and yes I was impressed... very busy and very fast.." - Adam H.

OK everyone you've convinced me, this sounds a VERY good finale cake I'm going to have to try one now as well!

Finally:

"Hey, thanks a lot. The response was almost as good as the firework itself. Thanks again. Eddie"


No worries Eddie that's what the Firework Review is all about, sharing useful info about fireworks so we can all go out and spend our hard earned money on the GOOD ones and beat our "non firework review reading" neighbours!!


UKFR Reader Lee Thomas gives us his opinion of a number of fireworks he tried this Guy Fawkes:

"Whistling jets 16 shot [Kimbolton]:- Pretty, great sounds and spins, excellent value for money, 90%! Would use two of these each side of the garden! I would love to see it in different colours too.

Bombblast missiles [Millennium]:- Great fun, fab audience reaction, would again use more than one, great value, 90%

Vulcan 70 shot cake:- short lived, very interesting, good reaction, good value, 80%

Space Trekker rocket pack [Millennium]:- really good rockets, we let off one, two, and then three at a time, three looked great, very pretty stars, I would say letting off all six instead of a Neutron pulse would be 100 times better! Great value 90%

Neutron Pulse [Bright Star]:- Not so good, it was one of the finales, not worth the money,Not very dramatic 40%

Crown jewels [Bright Star]:- beautiful fallout, but too short lived, the audience reaction was great, 70%

Glitterblitz 19 shot [Standard]:- Not as good as I imagined from the review, the mother of all thunder seemed just as loud! 50%

Mother of all thunder [Golden Lion]:- Produced huge audience laughs as they could not believe it went on so long! 90% Had a complaint from a neighbour who threatened to call the environmental health authority despite the fact I warned them all! Let this one of early.

Purple Chrysanthemum [Black Cat]:- As the review said, really deep colour breaks, very beautiful, if not huge breaks 85%

Large Silver fountain [Millennium]:- Used two here, one each side of the garden, was really pretty, excellent value. But I also bought two Black cats Jewel of the Nile from a local shop which seemed the same and cost a quid less each. 90%

Giant Golden crackling cone [Millennium]:- Fabulous large effect, huge spray, very beautiful. would use two next time! 95%

Kraken 19 shot [Kimbolton]:- Excellent firework, really pretty with elaborate stunning breaks. 90%

Star Bombard [Cosmic]:- Another excellent firework, stunningly bright shell displays, lit up the garden, really pretty. 90%

25 shot hatching sea dragons [Kimbolton]:-loved this one loads of wrigglers, so pretty 90%

Wild Geese [Golden Lion]:- Great cake, fab sounds and screeches, great audience reaction. 90%

Imperial salute [Golden Lion]:- semi finale cake, really good build up of shells and explosions, fab 90%

Great western [Vulcan]:- Well, what can I say, built up from a few shells to a monster array of shells and effects all colours, beautiful blues, really profesional,stunned audience reaction. For me, aural and visual overdose ,fabulous. Effect 100%, value for money 75%, I wonder whether three imperial salutes, or some other combination would have been better!

Overall audience impression was that they didn't expect that sort of display in a garden, everybody said it launched the party big style. The display cost approx £350 and was worth it, those moments although short are priceless.

I reckon I would have done better with more smaller rockets. With rockets, it's not just the effect, but the launch, and launching six space trekker rockets rather than one £15 rocket would have been much more dramatic. The Great western was fab, when you're watching a dramatic firework, anything seems to short, so I'm not sure how long it lasted. "

Thanks Lee!

Andrew says about Red Dragon's big Millennium Dragon cake (sold as a Single Ignition Box) compared to the more well known Back Cat SIB1:

" I thought the Millennium Dragon was okay but nothing special, especially
for the price. As we ran the MD and Sib1 side by side it was a good way to
compare them if thats the right term as there wasn't really much comparison
between them. I thought the Sib1 won hands down. While the MD fired a lot
quicker it didn't have the variation or power of Sib1. I also had a Red
Dragon 190 shot small cake and was better value for money than the MD. I was
pretty impressed with their Galaxy and Nebula rockets."

Thanks Andrew, Black Cat are going to be hard to beat especially when the SIB1 is discounted to under £30!!


In response to our questions about the reliability of Bright Star's bigger rockets, we have some detailed feedback from Rico:

"Hi Pete, I have no experience with their larger £15 stuff but I have fired the following Bright Star rockets recently:

Trail Blazer – discounted price - £8.00 per pack of four – unexpectedly large/loud burst for just £2, also the pack contained four varying effects with a particularly nice “wriggling snake” burst from one rocket. Others were large peony type effects. Excellent value for money, I would have bought loads of these for “fill” effects if it wasn’t for the fact that along with buying my test pack of Trail Blazers I also purchased a test pack of the Fireball XL5’s…

Fireball XL5 – This Fireball XL5 had a shell head size about 80% that of a Victory rocket and attracted my attention, however the price of £12 (discounted) initially computed in my brain to be 50% more than the £8 Trail Blazer pack and I wondered if it was actually 50% better? Then I suddenly realised the XL5 pack contained FIVE rockets as opposed to the four pack Trail Blazers. A quick bit of mental arithmetic revealed an individual price of £2.40 each – sold! The effects, although not as varied as the Trail Blazer (just peony’s - you get 1 x Gold Peony, 1 x Red Peony, 1 x Green Peony and 2 x Red, White, Green Assorted per pack – annoyingly the “Red, White and Green Assorted” was the least impressive effect and of course you get two of these per pack! rant! rant!) but were definitely more than 40p better. The acceleration was phenomenal, the altitude impressive, the report grin inducing and the star burst unbeatable for £2.40. As a further accolade to the XL5, I chose it to be the main cheap filler rocket for my display and purchased a further 40 firing them in five fanned salvo’s of eight rockets each, this looked/sounded great. Reliability? out of the 40 fired, only one failed to launch, the motor ignited but appeared to generate a feeble, quiet thrust and I was frustratingly forced to retreat from the rack for what seemed minutes to avoid the ground level starburst – annoyingly, the same thing happened with a pack of “War of The Worlds” rockets…

I don’t know why I purchased these, as an avid value for money pyro I could see clearly that to have “Jeff Waynes War Of The Worlds” copyright material plastered all over the rocket head must contribute in some way to the price I would pay for the item, still, at £20 for a pack of three they worked out at £6.66 each and resembled a Vulcan Mega Traveller in head size. The bright red nose cone on one rocket had come adrift and revealed a single 2” mortar shell nestling deep in the head. As for performance? OK for £6.66 I guess but certainly not three times as good as the XL5 rocket considering it costs nearly three times as much. Nice wide burst, nice effects (almost sky filling) decent altitude but just not really worth the £6.66, especially as only two launched successfully, the third sitting contentedly in the rack giving a tenth of the thrust of the other two before opening up a massive shellburst like some form of new 3D groundmine design. Amazingly as a result of this “misfire” much whooping ensued from the non-pyro crowd although the more shrewd individuals wondered why myself and the other firer were fleeing carrying lit portfires like two competitors in a kind of pyrotechnic relay race. I wouldn’t rate these rockets as poor by any means, but I wouldn’t purchase them again, especially in the face of competition from the Doomsday Deployment pack…

This is what I said in an earlier thread in this forum referring to this particular Bright Star offering: “Doomsday Deployment Oh wow! Doomsday Deployment rocket pack from Brightstar! the pack contains 4 rockets and retails at £19.99 less 20% discount = £16, that’s £4.00 each, the massive rocket head (bigger than the Victory, about the size of a Vulcan Mega Traveller) contains TWO 2" mortar shells and has a full 25mm dia aluminium rocket motor (again, bigger than the Victory) this is no air headed rip off rocket, the first shell bursts into a supernova ring followed by a second shellburst of colour - all for £4!!You can get TWO of these double burst mortar shell headed monsters for the price of ONE single burst Vulcan Victory! Its just this sort of product coming along that forces prices down *luuurvly* Next time you go to buy a Victory rocket, ask the shop guy if he can do it for £4, if not, just buy the Bright Star :)” I had just test fired one before I originally wrote this (can you tell? :)) and in addition to the upsides there was in truth a minor downside relating to quality. The rocket stick, (which incidentally seemed abnormally short for a rocket of this size, the balance point was well up the rocket motor, nowhere near the choke and each rocket described a large radius arc rather than a bolt upright ascent) was fixed into a small socket in the back of the head which would be useless alone with the leverage of the stick but additionally relied on a second clip being fixed to the stick and around the body of the rocket motor, a bit like a “Terry” clip. The problem was that, a) the clip seemed loose on the motor body as if it were too big and b) the clip wasn’t fixed to the stick in any way – one had worked its way completely off the motor and half way down the stick and the other three had managed to slide right up to the top of the motor allowing the whole assembly to become loose on the stick. Repositioning of the clip and a spot of hotmelt glue fixed the problem though and I still think this is one serious VFM rocket, look at what you are getting: 2 x 2” mortar shells powered by a 25mm aluminium rocket motor for £4? Unbeatable value/massive performance ….

Sorry I don’t have any info on the bigger stuff but I would have to agree with Adam, firing several smaller (but good) rockets in a single salvo EASILY outshines a single large effect rocket - imagine firing either two Neutron Pulse rockets for your finale OR a quickmatched fanned salvo of eight Trailblazers and four double burst 2” mortar shell headed Doomsday Deployments simultaneously, the second scenario would give 12 rockets airborne with a total payload of eight starbursts and eight 2” mortar shellbursts superbly filling the sky yet would cost the same as just launching two Neutron Pulse’s!"

Many thanks Rico for your comments which will be of great use to readers, it seems just about everyone has now realised smaller rocket packs are just as good as the big ones and far better value.


Neville Sawdon reports these good ones:

"My favourites this year were:
Sky Monkey with Exploding Coconuts - Lasts forever
Cosmic's Mega Bomb single shot air bomb - bright silver tailed comet which
tuns into a bang of around the same impact as a 2.5" salute shell in my
opinion.
Silver Fish is Blue Sea - from Golden Lion £9.99 - large bore 25 shot cake
which blasts shell out like a mine with small blue stars (the blue sea) when
shells explode at a good height they produce a good burst of silver wigglies
(fish) Great Firework has anyone else had one ?"


El3ctr0n1c r3b31 reports on Hell Raisers and Sky Barrage rockets:

"I just wanted to let you know my opinion on Bright Star's "Hell Raisers". For the price (around 14 quid) they are not really that loud. This is because, for only 10 quid I got 10 "Sky Barrage" by Bright Star. (Of course, I bought 50 of them). The bang is about twice as loud as the Hell Raisers (which are dedicated Maroon rockets), and they have the coolest display in a cat. 2 rocket for the price that I have ever seen. The "Sky Barrage" are the best rockets, because the bang is ear-shattering, and the effect really is very cool.


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READER DISPLAYS

Jared Steiner writes:

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm a transplanted yank and I put on a 4th of July show again this year and it went great (like i said this letter is a little late). I just read your latest news letter and some one asked about other displays. As far as I know i will be having my 3rd annual 4th party again in 2001.

In '99 I had a display of £175 from Millennium and it went well. All the British people said it was one of the better displays they'd seen. In 2000, I lit a staggering £575 worth of fireworks. I had some Millennium Rockets and they didn't do as well this year. I also had some Bright Star rockets and cakes and they were wonderful. Last but not least I had Kimbolton mixed pack that I won't get again I had also their MT Vesuvious mine pack that was well worth it. And For the grand finale, I had Kimbolton's Northern Lights
connected to two large brightstar cakes and two brightstar big bahooma cakes. The 90 or so people that attended really enjoyed the 15 minute show. I hope to even be bigger next year!"

Thanks Jared, you yanks (as you put it, before I get lynched by our US readers!) know how to make a loud noise, I know more than one of our British readers pop along to July 4th displays because of this.


Come to think of it, all these firework celebrations are enough to make a grown Englishman cry. First on July 4th all you US people celebrate independence from us, then four months later we celebrate almost having our Houses Of Parliament blown up too. Am I missing something here? ;-)

Anyone got any other great reasons to celebrate with fireworks?



AND FINALLY...

YOUR FEEDBACK WANTED! Now we are non-commercial again you have no excuse not to share your firework opinions! Let us know what you did this Millennium!


Regards,

Pyro Pete - UK Firework Review

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