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| You also may be Interested in a Silly String Gun... |
 | What better way to shoot your silly string. Comes with 2 - 3oz cans of silly string. Liven up your party or wedding or any celebration -- add Silly String |
Instead of singing Happy Birthday ... spray Party String.
Instead of rice ... spray Silly String.
Instead of boring decorations ... spray some Party String.
Want to have some drug free, alcohol free fun ... use Silly String.
On a 12 hour trip with just my daughter and myself, I packed several cans of silly string. At rest stops, I'd give her a can, and I'd have a can, and we would play "Gotcha!" It was silly, got us both moving around, and in bright spirits. Rules were set in advance:
1. Mom says when & where we play.
2. Spraying only from shoulders down.
3. Stay away from other travelers who may not want to be in the fun.
4. Clean up when done.
History of Silly String
Silly String is a flexible, brightly-colored plastic string, which is shot as a stream of liquid from an aerosol can. The string sets quickly in mid-air, allowing one to shoot a seemingly-endless strand of it. Silly String is popular for usage during weddings, birthday parties, school carnivals and other festive occasions.
Silly String was introduced in 1969 by the world renowned entrepreneur Julius Sämann, the inventor of pine-tree-shaped air fresheners for cars. It is polymer-based, likely on a polystyrene dissolved in solvent that evaporates in the air and acts as a foaming agent. The pressure in the can propels the mixture a distance of up to 10 feet.
Silly String is also occasionally sold as "webbing fluid" in Spider-Man costumes.
Silly String and similar products have long been used by American and British forces to detect tripwires for explosive booby traps. To use it in this manner, the soldier stands in the doorway and sprays the material over the suspect area. If the string falls to the ground there are no tripwires. However, if there is a tripwire, the string will be suspended in the air without pulling the wire. As of 2006 it is being used by U.S. troops in Iraq for this purpose.
Unlike earlier versions of Silly String, IncredibleGifts.com sells Silly String that is CFC free.
A Special Request From Troops in Iraq
Helping the Troops
How you can send them life-saving Silly String
By ELLIN MARTENS
TIME with CNN.com Thursday, Dec. 07, 2006
Last month TIME wrote about soldiers and Marines in Iraq requesting an unusual life-saving item in their care packages sent from home: Silly String. It seems that the neon plastic party streamers sprayed into an open doorway before a building search or across a darkened room can help detect nearly invisible trip wires attached to bombs and boobytraps. The old methods to detect trip wires — sweeping the space with a metal grappling hook or getting close enough for a visual inspection — just aren't as safe, Marines discovered.
Marcelle Shriver, an office manager and Army mom from Stratford, N.J., first advertised for Silly String donations in her church bulletin after her son called from Ramadi and mentioned how the Marine unit he was working with had passed on their tip to his combat engineers new to Iraq.
Since our item on this latest display of military ingenuity first ran, it's been picked up by everyone from Fox & Friends to Jon Stewart's Daily Show. And Shriver has been inundated with donations and cash for shipping. She's even had a private pilot volunteer his services to fly the stuff to Kuwait where it will be taken by truck to Iraq in January. (Because aerosol cans are considered hazardous materials, they're extremely expensive or impossible to ship by commercial or freight air carriers.)
Shriver told TIME today that her one-car garage is now stacked with more than a thousand cans of the stuff. She's looking for more. TIME has also received inquiries from teachers around the country whose students read the story and want to help Shriver in her Silly quest.
"You've gotten me into this mess," she wrote TIME via e-mail. "And I love it!" It will all be worthwhile, she says, if it can save one person's life.
If you'd like to send donations of cans of Silly String or other items for troop care packages, the address is:
Marcelle Shriver
c/o St. Luke's Church
55 Warwick Rd.
Stratford, N.J. 08084
(CBS13) SACRAMENTO Deborah Johns of Roseville is putting together care packages for her son William’s Marine unit serving in Iraq. She’s sending holiday cheer and a taste of home where it's desperately needed.
Earlier this week, in a care package for her son, Deborah included something unusual William specifically asked for. Silly string is quickly becoming a common request from troops overseas. The subject even made the pages of Time Magazine. So why do they want it?
"Because it's light weight and it helps detect wires when they're going through a doorway without setting off the explosive ordinance,” said Johns.
You can see how the string gets hung up on wires that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye, wires that could be connected to a bomb. And this is not something the military provides.
"We as parents back home are gonna' do whatever they ask us to do in order to save their lives and make sure that they're protected. We'll send whatever it is they request. And who would've thought silly string would be one of those? Who would've guessed it? “said Johns.
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