Safety

As noted in the Company Profile, the origin of the Firewheel was rooted in concern about the number of youngsters that were suffering serious, permanent injury (particularly eye injury) in the normal course of playing with home-made sling shots, bows and arrows, and the like.

Kids are exposed to images and references to guns, in their daily lives through TV, movies, Internet, video games, newspapers, magazines, comics, and a range of other things, and because of this they have a natural urge to want to shoot things (whether their parents like it or not)

There is a child-minding centre in Brisbane (capital of Queensland) where toy guns are not allowed, so the children (girls as well as boys) eat their sandwiches into the shape of guns and chase each other around.

The intent of the Firewheel is to soak up this urge to shoot things, and distract them away from some of the dangerous activities, and to do this, it has to look pretty mean and business-like, and have a “real gun” look and feel to it.

As a consequence, we spooked most of the Australian mothers, who ironically thought it looked dangerous, without understanding what it actually did.

However they are now coming to respect the safety credentials of the Firewheel, and we do not receive any complaints at all in this regard. Close to 20,000 Firewheels have been sold in Australia, and there has been no report whatsoever of any permanent injury.

On the other hand, we are finding that many American mothers are relieved to see something that only fires rubber bands ......... and it does only fire rubber bands, as the closed-barrel design intentionally makes it very difficult to fire anything else, as well as giving it more of a “real gun” look.

This enables the Firewheel to comply with our very strict Australian Standard AS1647 Pt 2, on Project-Firing Toys, and it is the only RBG that does, and hence the only one that can be legally sold in Australia, where there are very strict laws controlling the private ownership of firearms.

It also complies with the European Standard “Safety of Toys” EN71, which qualifies us to use the “CE Label”

The Firewheel will certainly sting on bare skin at close range, but that is the extent of the damage. Even if you are hit directly in the eye it is very unlikely that you will suffer any injury beyond a watery eye.

The Australian Standard above works on an estimated factor of safety between 8 and 10 against penetrating an eye.

The reality is that the rubber bands, in their own right, are quite safe, as they are made from a soft shock-absorbing material (rubber), and spread their energy over a significant area on impact

A good way to demonstrate this is to fire the bands at a dusted blackboard, or other surface, where the impact shape can clearly be seen.

Of much more concern are the things that could be launched with the bands, such as paper clips, bolt washers, match sticks, and the like.

In 2003, we met a woman at a trade show in Rockhampton (about an hour North of Gladstone), whose sister had lost the sight in one eye, due to a folded paper pellet fired with a rubber band ……. and most of us did that as youngsters.

This is the reason so much trouble was taken with the design of the Firewheel, so that it is extremely difficult to insert dangerous projectiles such as pencils, pins, nails, paperclips etc, and then launch them.

 

With regard to projectile-firing toys, Australian Standard AS 1647.2 is the strictest standard in the world, and the Firewheel is the only rubber band gun that complies with all its requirements. Please click the image below for the full report on the safety of the Firewheel RBG.