IS THERE ANYTHING STINKIER THAN OLD DIRTY LAUNDRY?

Yes.  Human feces.  But that will be the subject of a different blog.

PSP and the history of tournament paintball (which will eventually lead to a discussion of their recent BPS rule change.)

Did you know that the PSP was founded on a lie and a vain attempt by one Lewis J. Braun to keep himself and his company at the forefront of tournament promotion?

It was.  Way back in 1992 when the teams founded the NPPL, they hired Mr. Braun to be their corporate counsel and also made the stupid-assed mistake of letting this same person volunteer to promote two of their scheduled six events - which later grew to four when Jeff Perlmutter of PMI dropped out of the promotion game. 

Well, ok, ancient history, right? Except for that pesky little saying about being condemned to repeat it if you don’t learn it, that bit of history could be forgotten.

The NPPL dropped its first event, reducing their inaugural season to five tournaments, which it has remained at ever since.  That left Mr. Braun promoting four out of five.

This despite the fact that this same promoter was responsible for the only national tournament who’s champion was decided by a coin toss in the parking lot (no lie – they had to turn on car headlights so they could see the toss.  Mr. Braun’s brilliant scheduling resulted in daylight running out before the game schedule did.)  AND the same person responsible for the world’s first $100,000 prize for a paintball tournament – that ended up handing out only $80,000 in cash.  And the same person who arrived at an NPPL annual meeting to announce that he had signed a deal with ESPN on behalf of the NPPL – any teams that wanted to be in it could pay him $2500 entry fee…(I’m getting ahead of myself.  I hope you didn’t miss the fact that he stepped into the middle of a television deal between the league and the network and then charged the people he was supposedly representing to attend…)

And then somehow Mr. Braun manuevered himself into the position of accepting all of the entry fees and unilaterally deciding how much of the take the league would get from him.  Seems there was always more dollars needed for port-a-johns that weren’t on site, more referees that didn’t show up, scoreboards that were never made…

Then he went through a period of having to ‘share’ his wealth with some of the bigger teams who used their own muscle to get a lock on promoting at least one event a year.  Smart Parts got an event.  Bad Boys Toys got an event.  PCRI/PEVs got an event, and others as well.

Somehow they all forgot that NPPL events were supposed to be put out for bid.  Funny – there was only ever one bid meeting…

Oh, and I forgot all about the member teams’ annual dividends.  See, the way things were set up, all of the founding member teams, and any other team that stepped up and purchased a membership in the league were supposed to get a share of the profits at the end of every season.  Year one – everyone got theirs.  Year two – everyone got theres and then decided to roll it back in as an investment in the league.  Year three – no payout.  And there hasn’t been one since.

The above was the result of Mr. Legal Counsel Braun’s suggestion that the league be set up as a shareholder’s corporation like – and I quote – “supermarket chains”. Oh.  OK.  Sure thing.   (“So if that’s the best way to go, how come all the other sports leagues are set up as non-profits?”  “Shut up you!”)  The shareholder thing was a brilliant move to blind everyone and anyone who might question what was going on with promises of money.

Then he moved to disenfranchise the amateur teams (there was a majority of them and they wanted to do things differently) – despite the fact that it was illegal to do so. 

And how was he able to do all of this you ask?  He was the duly appointed legal counsel for the league and, as far as the paper trail is concerned, he never transferred ownership of the corporation to its real owners – the teams.

He also got rid of or bought off anyone in a position to question the way things were being run.  Anyone remember Kevin Donaldson? Jim Anderson?  Steve Davidson? Rosie?  Every one of them will tell you the same story – after they stop throwing up.  Braun used them as fronts and then cut them off at the knees when they got too uppity.

So then along comes Chuck Hendsch.  Chuck had been elected as Vice President of the NPPL the very last time that the organization held legally constituted elections.  Since the President (Tom Cole) had resigned (probably in disgust) according to the league’s legal by-laws, Chuck was in charge until such time as elections could be held again.

Chuck found some friends that gave him the monetary and political clout to take control of the NPPL away from Braun.  He announced what he was going to do (the league’s by-laws were in disarray owing to the fact that there were no legal voting members any more.  Braun killed that too) and then set about doing it, which entailed a complete separation of the league from anything Mr. Braun was involved in.

Go back and check the letter columns in the magazines and the archives of the web forums.  Braun publicly states that Hendsch was stealing the league.  He even went so far as to rename his organization PSP-NPPL in an attempt to confuse the marketplace.  But there was little he could do, since Chuck had been smart enough to secure the league’s intellectual property and Chuck won that shouting match.

The following year, Braun removed the NPPL part of his league’s name and its been in competition with the NPPL ever since.

Over the years, Braun has been alternately praised as having been instrumental in founding tournament ball in the US and reviled as a power-grabbing manipulator.  His reputation became so bad at one point that he had to hide his involvement with various enterprises:  his position with ProCaps as some kind of corporate advisor and distributor, his ownership stake in Cousin’s Paintball, his revenue sharing stake in Paintball Sports Magazine and who all knows what else.  The man was famous for ‘doing favors’ for people and then demanding payment at some future date.

(Quick humorous aside.  Mr. Braun hasn’t always had it his own way.  One company I know used to advertise in his magazine – Paintball Sports International. This company called the magazine up to temporarily stop their advertising since they didn’t want to go in debt.  Braun said he’s run the ads anyway.  The company insisted that the ads stop and stated they wouldn’t be responsible for paying even if they were run.  Braun ran the ads anyway.  Later on that year, the company attempted to purchase a booth at the World Cup.  They were told that they couldn’t have one until they settled their bill with the magazine – just fold it in with the booth price.  The total came to something like $3,000 of which half could be product that would be used for prizes.  The company delivered $1500.00 in bottle o-rings to the event…I’ll bet there are still some players out there using that “prize”.)

One thing is for sure – he’s never given up effective control of anything he’s been involved in.  You may not see him wandering around (which was difficult to do even when he was wandering around), but he’s still out there some where.

So now we come to ramping, rate of fire and the continuing antics of the PSP.  Which will have to wait for part two of this entry.  Except for an answer to Mr. Raehl’s statement in the comments of the previous post.  You are wrong about the history of setting ROF limits.  Everyone in the tournament game at the time was well aware that the ASTM, under major pressure from the American Medical Association, was insisting that there be NO full auto, NO multi-shot modes and that ALL electronic semi-auto markers should be physically limited to no more than 13 balls per second.  13.  Not 13.3.  Not 13 with ramping.  No bouncing.  No ramping.  No memory modes.  One trigger pull per ball.  Period.

They ALL knew it.  Some manufacturers voluntarily accepted the standard before it was finalized by ASTM (Brass Eagle among them).  Others, finding a willing partner in the PSP, chose to steal market share by ignoring the standard – and player safety – instead.

POLITICALLY CORRECT CAVEATS: Hendsch and Pure Promotions have since sold their interest to Pacific Paintball and Shawn Walker.  Since Pure Promotions set up an entirely new corporation, there’s probably nothing that the original NPPL owners (the teams) can do – and at this point it would be a wasteful, disruptiuve and pointless effort.  PSP has been taken over by Lane Wright and company and all of the evidence points to the fact that Lane is at least trying to do things wRight.  In any event, Lane wasn’t around when most of the foregoing occurred and doesn’t carry any resonsibility for any of it.

I’m sorry. I just couldn’t resist.

I found this on Ebay today.

The ad copy said (among other things): ”Very few men like the feeling of teeth on their penis. Teeth can cause discomfort, cuts, and scratches to the skin if you are not careful.”

Umm. Okay.  

You, or someone you’re sharing a bed with, puts this thing in their mouth like they’re getting ready to play football.  Then you break out all the other optional equipment.

A CHEEZY ATTEMPT AT SELF-PROMOTION

Sometime during the next day or so I’m going to post a blog on the subject of the PSP and the lowering of the legal RPS rate.

I’m not going to be nice.

BOTH the PSP AND the teams that play in it are going to come under the gun (with an unlimited ROF), so tell your friends to check back here soon and often. 

I’m heading out to see a man about a payloader. There’s just no way possible to shovel PSP shit manually…

CONFESSIONS OF A PAINTBALL MANUFACTURER

Dale Ford, the Editor-in-Chief of 68Caliber.com, the internet news publication that occassionally prints my editorial scribblings, has asked me for a declaritive statement regarding the relationship of my identity and his identity.

Here it is:  If asked under oath in a court of law, I would have to admit that I am NOT Dale Ford.  Stating otherwise would be perjury on my part.

The foregoing interruption of our regularly scheduled paintball screed was prompted by an email Dale received from one of the scions of the paintball industry who is obviously not too happy with some of the things I said in my earlier blog.  I conclude this from Dale’s insistence that I make the above statement. 

Not being privy to the rantings and ravings (constantly inhaling PEG probably affects the mental processes) I’m at a loss as to how to respond to what Dale described as “facts that refuted (my) statements”.

Refute away oh mighty king of gelatinous substances.  Thanks for reading, btw and forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but there is a comment button down at the bottom of the page.  If you want to take me to task, please, PLEASE to so – but don’t hide behind the great and hairy one over at 68Caliber.  Come on over here.  We’re waiting.

 Provocative title, huh?  No, I’m not a paintball manufacturer – nor have I ever been, but I’ve visited numerous facilities and have been right next to the manufacturing process , not to mention other aspects of the “drug dealer” side of the industry.

***

When I started to write this entry I had in mind passing along all of the questionable business practices that I’ve witnessed over the years.  Things like putting cheap paint into expensive paint boxes, fobbing excess oil off as a ’good thing’, leaving the deodorizer out of the mix (less expensive, much smellier ball), shipping the old, unmovable inventory to major events and selling it to a captive audience at premium prices, that kind of thing.

But then I started thinking about the apparent disconnect between the paint manufacturer’s stated marketing claims and their manufactured designs, and I decided it was much more important to share these observations. 

Back in the day before we knew any better, paint was BIG and HEAVY.  If my opponent was behind a bush, I could use a few rounds to cut branches and leaves out of the way, digging a tunnel through the bush in order to get that elimination.  Try that these days and you end up with an interestingly colored bush.

This is partially because the IPPA began setting safety standards, many of which were adopted by the current standards setting organization, the ASTM.  One of the things they determined was that both the weight of the ball and the maximum velocity it could be shot at needed to have limits in order to insure a safe game.

Using physics, they ultimately determined that the maximum weight should be 3.4 grams and that the maximum velocity should be 300 feet per second. 

Here’s an airsoft site that offers a calculator for determining the ‘foot/pounds’ of a paintball impact.  http://www.pyramydair.com/site/articles/formulas/ Ft/lbs is a measure of force and is essentially how many pounds of pressure are exerted over a one square foot area by a given object at rest or by an applied force.  The calculator uses grains as a measure of weight rather than grams, so here’s a grams-to-grains conversion site: http://www.metric-conversions.org/cgi-bin/util/convert.cgi

The maximum “legal” weight for paintballs is 3.4 grams, which works out to 52.4699 grains.  Let’s plug that and 300 fps into the calculator – it comes to 10.49 ft/lbs.

Just for fun:  plug the same weight in at 240 fps. This is a typical nighttime velocity limit at many scenario games: that yeilds 6.7 ft/lbs, almost a 40% reduction in force. 

 Now try a ball that weighs say, 2.8 grams at 300 fps and you get: 8.64 ft/lbs…

and once again, that lighter ball shot at 240 fps: 5.53 ft/lbs

Here’s those numbers together for easier comparison:

3.4 grams @ 300 fps = 10.49

2.8 grams @ 300 fps = 8.64

3.4 grams @ 240 fps = 6.7

2.8 grams @ 240 fps = 5.53

Pretty dramatic difference.  That night time player with the light weight balls might as well stay in his tent.

It is a truism of physics that if you accelerate two objects of different masses at the same rate, the massier (heavier) object will travel further.  There’s more energy in the system because you had to impart more energy to accelerate the massier object.

Consider that for a moment in light of the energy-at-impact information provided earlier.  The heavier paintball is going to have a better chance at breaking AND the heavier paintball is going to travel further (under a given impulse) than a lighter ball.  More potential breaks over a greater distance.

If that’s the case – then why have paintballs been getting smaller and lighter with every passing season?  Especially in the face of all of the advertising claims to the contrary?  Better range, better accuracy.  Not in the physics lab.

The answer is PROFIT.

While promising you better range, better accuracy and better breakability, the companies are actually making a product that stands less of a chance of breaking, can’t travel as far under present velocity limits and, due to other contributing physical factors, won’t be as accurate.  (A massier object is less subject to wind resistance and less influenced by drag effects.)

Pretend for a moment that you are a paintball manufacturer.  (Porsche in the driveway and a Hummer in the garage, regular three month European vacations, tens of thousands of sycophantic worshipers throwing themselves bodily across puddles so that your Bruno Mali  shoes will not get muddy.)

Now pretend you are a paintball manufacturer pretending to be a balance scale.  Hold both hands up at chest height, palms up.  Let’s watch what happens as we try and balance profit against customer satisfaction.  Let’s put some profit on one scale.  A quarter ought to do.  See how your hand starts to dip down under the quarter’s weight?  Now, before things get out of hand, let’s drop some customer happiness into the other hand. 

Hmmm.  It doesn’t seem to have any effect.  The hand with the quarter is continuing to dip lower and lower.  No matter how much intangible customer satisfaction crap we drop into the other hand, profit still out-balances it.  Even a quarter of profit completely emasculates (that’s “chops the testicals off of” for vocabularly challenged folks) any pro customer arguments the manufacturers make. 

Now take your mind off of that under-age paintball groupie.  You’re not really a paintball manufacturer, only pretending to be one.  You might want to think about taking a shower instead…  

This is NOT an isolated phenomena.  Let’s take commercial field paint as an example.  The stated (marketing) purpose of commercial fields is to help grow the sport.  Give newbies a positive paintball experience and before you know it they’re idiotically spending every moldy penny they can pull out of the couch cushions. 

So then how come most (if not all) field paint is designed to bounce?

We know that bouncers typically hurt more on impact than breakers do.  This is because some of those foot pounds we mentioned earlier are dispersed during the act of breaking, reducing the amount of energy imparted to the target.

This is not circumstantial;  paint companies work very hard to make their field paint with as thick a shell as possible.  They advertise this quality to their field owner customers under the guise of ‘fewer breaks in the barrel and therefore less time doing maintenance’.

Under their breaths, they point out to the field owner that in terms of profit, bouncers are a good thing.  If only one shot in three, or four, or five results in an elimination, the field owners’ paint sales will go up proportionately.  We don’t count bouncers, only breaks.  The player that wants to win is going to keep on shooting at his target until he gets a break.

But is this really a good thing?  The result is that we’re physically punishing our (potential) new customer base.  The very people we’re trying to convince of the greatness and fun of paintball are experiencing pain deliberately inflicted by the paint manufacturers and field owners working in concert with them.  (I don’t want to indict all field owners with that statement.  Some of them are just clueless.)

How many new activities would you be inclined to try if the price of admission was a punch in the snoot from the very person taking your money?  (I know at least some of you would seek it out eagerly – see my piece on BDSM & paintball below.)  If the initiation for skydiving was getting dropped ten feet face first onto a concrete tarmac –  before you even got in the plane - there would be fewer skydivers every year.  If qualifying for a driver’s license meant that you had to first be involved in a high speed front-end collision, most people would be taking the bus.

We’re doing the same thing to our newbies.  Clever marketing, even down to the guerilla level (if you can’t take the pain, you’re not a real paintballer) gets people to ignore common sense and buy into the hype.  But if you think about it for even half a second, you’ll realize that at some point the uncomfortable realities of physics can no longer be ignored.  A lighter ball may be better for the manufacturers’ profit (less material, less cost) – but there is no way to make the claim that it has better range and accuracy.  A thicker shelled ball may be better for a manufactuer’s or field owners’ profit, but there is no way to change the fact that this results in more pain and injury on the field, no matter how much you want to believe that its because rental guns are hard on paintballs.

You can believe in the fantasies.  Most do.  Or, you can take a look at the reality, which is that the paint manufacturers have clearly put their profit way ahead of customer satisfaction, and have amply demonstrated that fact through the characteristics of the very products that they make.  The old expression goes something like ‘make a wish in one hand and take a crap in the other and see which one fills up first’.  In this case, its the marketing claims that are the crap.

GELATIN CARTELS & THE RISING COST OF PAINT

If you are a fan of movies about intrepid, flinty investigative reporters like I am, you’ll be familiar with the concept of having a “nose for news”. 

Its the idea that some people have an instinct for uncovering information and uber skills at getting to it.

You don’t really have to have a psychic news ability to be able to figure out when something is up that needs looking into.

For example.  Right now there’s nothing much happening in the industry.  Or so it seems.  Upon further examination:

Smart Parts, Tippmann and JT Sports have all made recent announcements that they have cut off their distributors and will now be selling dealer direct.  That’s BIG news.  So how come the paintball airwaves aren’t overheating?

Dig a little deeper and start asking questions.  When and why do manufacturers of large, popular product lines stop using the services of distributors?  I can think of only two reasonable answers, which are really different sides of the same coin.  Either their dealer network is so well established now that they don’t need a distributor or they’re tired of squeezing out that middle third of their margins.

In either case it indicates a quest to chop out an expense so that they can be more competitive on the street.

Wait.  Dig deeper.    If a company needs to make more room in its pricing…

Which brings us to gelatin cartels.  (Cue dramatic music.)

Its widely believed that back in the mid 90s, all of the paintball manufacturers got together and formed the Gelatin Cartel for the purpose of secretive price-fixing.  Some also believe that the purpose of the Cartel was to drive a few smaller manufacturers out of the business and/or to keep non-US/Canadian based manufacturers out of the North American Market. 

Of course cartels that monopolize an industry and price fixing are completely illegal, so either the cartel is a myth, paintball was too small for the Feds to bother with it or, or, they were very good at what they did. 

There aren’t any smoking guns to prove the existence of such an organization, but it is interesting that right about the same time, all of the manufacturer’s pricing fell into line with each other, dedicated paint brands hit the market and paint “grades” became a real thing.  Hmmmmm.

We also started hearing stories about how the commodities that were used to make paintballs (gelatin, glycerine, etc) were going up in price, which meant that our brave and ever-sacrificing, ever-suffering, profitless paintball manufacturers were going to be forced – reluctantly, kicking and screaming in protest – to raise paintball prices across the board.  Not that they wanted to, mind you.  Oh no.  Those guys would give everyone free paint if they could afford to.  We all know that, right?  Don’t blame them, please.  Its really DOW Chemical’s fault – the bastards.  They had to go and raise prices on a key component and now the manufacturers are going to suffer.

Oh, wait.  They passed those price increases right on to the consumer, didn’t they?

Its very interesting that right now, behind the scenes, we’re hearing the EXACT SAME STORY.  Commodity prices are going up so paintball prices are going to go up – BUT ITS NOT THE MANUFACTURERS’ FAULT.  Blame the chemical companies.  Blame big oil.  Blame the renderers of horse and cow hides.  But please don’t take it out on the paint companies.  They’re being victimized just as much as the consumer is going to be – as soon as they can get around to it.

By which I mean, as soon as they get you to buy the story of how badly they’re suffering, the prices will go up.  And since they’ll ALL go up at the same time (mightly coincidental – not!) no one will have any choice except to sit and suck on the big one.

Think I’m way out there in left field?  Ok.  Then how come some paint manufacturers are working very hard right now to kill the introduction of less expensive chemicals for paintball formulations?  Could it be that such a thing would kill their excuses for raising prices?  Nah.

PTP & BRASS EAGLE REACH OUT OF COURT SETTLEMENT!

EDITED TO INCLUDE COMMENTS TO COMMENTORS!

This story has been making the rounds on the forums for the past couple of days and the comments on those forums make me fear for the future of the human race.  Why?  Despite the fact that reproduction is essentially instinctual, the complete lack of intelligence demonstrated by many of those posts lead me to believe that many paintballers lack the intelliegence to be able to figure out where to stick it.  If you see someone humping a lamppost, I’ll lay dollars to donuts its a paintballer…

Please.  If you are too stupid to reproduce, do us the courtesy of staying off the forums.  Go and review some ‘tricks of journalism’ – like how to tell the truth without outing your source or how to figure out what ‘no comment’ really means, and then re-read ths post.

That’s the headline you’ll see on 68caliber.com.

You’ll also see those famous and annoying words ‘terms of the agreement are undisclosed’.

What, you didn’t know that Pro-Team Products and Brass Eagle were engaged in an arbitration regarding intellectual property?  I know we reported on it several months back.  Maybe Dale will provide a link to the older story in the new story…

The headline and that disclaimer about confidentiality regarding the results is about ALL you’re gonna see though.  Seems someone requested a gag order as part of the resolution.

So, rather than reporting the news I’m gonna have to stick with supposition, theory, guesswork, SWAGs, assumptions, logical analysis from the facts at hand and any other phrases I can come up with to indicate to all and sundry that I’m not privy to inside information and no one has spilt the beans inappropriately.  (But remember that I’ve got a near 100% correct track record of figuring out the truth from incomplete information.  Not too tough when you consider all you really have to do is figure out what an incompetent, idiotic, egotistical, power-hungry, money-grubbing person would do in a given situation, multiply the idiocy factor by how much money they have in the bank and you won’t be too far off the truth…)

Suppositions and Assumptions: It seems to me that of all the parties involved in an arbitration, the one that’s in the right and wins is the last one that would want a gag order imposed.  Since the folks at Pro-Team have NEVER conducted their business in secret, (at least that’s the impression one would draw from their press releases) I come to the inevitable conclusion that it was they who WON the settlement.

This theory of mine means that the headline on 68caliber.com ought to say “PRO-TEAM PRODUCTS KICKS BRASS EAGLE’S BUTT IN ARBITRATION SETTLEMENT!”  or, if one wanted to be a little more sensational “TINY LITTLE SPECIALTY DESIGN & MANUFACTURING COMPANY TAKES ON DARLING OF WALLSTREET AND WINS!”

Yes folks, if it weren’t for the smarmy, cowardly action of a large corporation insisting that a major event affecting everyone in the paintball industry be kept a deep, dark, dank secret, you’d all know that IT IS POSSIBLE FOR A SMALL COMPANY TO TAKE ON THE BIG GUYS AND WIN!

But you don’t know that because this is just speculation on my part.

What was this all about?  Well – no one can tell you because it must be kept a secret.  (I used to wonder why Brass Eagle had a warehouse inside a cave and now I know:  remember the scene at the end of Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark – a guy wheeling the Ark of the Covenenant deep into the bowels of a US Government Secrets cave?  I think they filmed that scene at Brass Eagle HQ.)

I can tell you what I think it was about.  I think that Pro-Team Products licensed Brass Eagle to use a whole mess of their patented designs for things like locking collets for loaders, (you know the ones that everyone poo-pooed as not patenable?  Was’nt it Smart Parts that proved to us that getting someone to agree to license your patented product  was just as good as getting a decision in court?) pneumatic grip frames (you know, the ones that everyone says have prior art? – the ones that several other companies are stepping on RIGHT NOW – because they believed that Pro-Team’s version was unenforceable?)  Guess what folks – Brass Eagle MADE it enforceable by licensing it from Pro-Team Products and if you think you’re immune from action – just remember that we’re pretty darn sure that PRO-TEAM PRODUCTS BEAT THE PANTS OFF OF BRASS EAGLE!

But of course I know nothing.  This is all mere speculation on the part of a paintball hack.  I could be wrong – maybe Brass Eagle licensed interruptable windshield wiper motors from Pro-Team and this has nothing at all to do with paintball.

But then again – since its all secret, anyone is free to speculate to whatever degree they wish.  For all we know and can tell from the public facts, Pro-Team Products sued Brass Eagle because they couldn’t stand the smell coming from Bentonville anymore.  Or maybe they discovered that in-breeding is still a big thing down there and objected to having to work with web-toed mutants.

Please – feel free to make up your own explanations (the more outrageous the better) as to why Pro-Team Products would sue the largest company in the industry and, most importantly, why they would WIN!

Ain’t secrets fun!?!  Bet Brass Eagle doesn’t think so anymore.

The really sad downside of this whole thing is that Pro-Team Products – one of the originators of the sport and technologies we use,  a company that was regularly consulted by most other manufacturers in the industry – Tippmann, National and the aforementioned Brass Eagle among them – was taken advantage of by a big guy, almost went out of business but managed to hang in there and prevail – and no one, least of all the OTHER companies that were or are trying to take advantage of Pro-Team Products (and you know who you are) will never know the details.  Instead of being able to learn from the example that was made of Brass Eagle, they’ll have to learn the lesson all over again by themselves.

And you – the paintball playing public- you have been deprived of learning everything there is to learn about how a little guy – sticking to their guns against all of the odds, even when things were stacked majorly against them - stayed the course, sweated it out and brought a behemoth to its knees, quaking and trembling in fear of defeat and the consequences of defeat.

Or at least that’s what I THINK happened…

MADE IN AMERICA

Paintball, I am happy and proud to say, is an American invention.  A wholly American invention.

I won’t go into the ramifications of the fact that ‘only in America’ do we invent games that involve simulated shooting and death (sorry.  Purists among you will by now be screaming ‘its only a game!’) because that’s not my focus today.  (Maybe next week I’ll pick up that mantle and see how far I can run with it…)

Three guys, living in the New England Region, the birthplace of our nation, excercised their Constitutionally Granted Rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (with pursuit probably being the most important element in this particular story), lived the American dream, made themselves wealthy and famous in a variety of fields and pursuits and then, simply on a whim, invented the greatest of all American pasttimes – paintball.

You know the phrase:  Where else but in America?  Right?  I mean, these guys made their pot in the fairytale, rags-to-riches kind of story we only see in movies.  And THEN they went on to invent paintball.

Do you you think those guys had any clue back in 1981 that their Made-In-America game would be almost entirely manufactured overseas?

I doubt it.  If my age-addled brain remembers correctly, that’s just about the time we were getting all upset over Japanese ownership of American companies, trying to protect the car companies from imports and wondering if there was going to be anything American-owned left in the country.

In fact one of the biggest marketing tools the original manufacturers used back then was to proudly stamp, laser engrave or sew “MADE IN AMERICA” directly onto their products.

You don’t see too much of that anymore these days, do you?

I’m betting that most of you can guess why.  For the slow amongst you its because “HARDLY ANYTHING YOU BUY THESE DAYS IS MADE IN THE USA”

I ran into this issue several years ago when I was still working in the industry.  I and my colleagues became aware that there were an awful lot of cheap, crappy, easily broken, no visible means of support, fly-by-night, here today, gone tomorrow so-called product flooding the market from overseas.

Well, big deal, we thought, American Made puts all this crap to shame and anyone with half a brain and one good eye can tell the difference.

We were right about that.  They can tell the difference.  The problem was they had an overseas budget, not an American Made one.  We got a ton of emails from people saying ‘gee, I wish I could afford your American Made stuff, but I can’t, so I bought a piece of crap. Sorry’.

Well, ok.  We’re still in business and when those kids get real jobs, they’ll remember that they really wanted our stuff.

And they did.  They flooded the market with requests for Made in America stuff and the manufacturers and distributors stepped up and met their demands.

Or so we were led to believe.

There are Federal laws that govern what can and what can’t have a label saying ‘Made in America’.  Those laws are pretty shaky – and pretty damn piss poor if you ask me.  I’m not going to bother re-reading the requirements, so forgive me if I’m a bit off on the numbers (government regulations are pretty dry stuff), but it works out to something like “if 70% of the components are made in the US, or if you assemble the product in the US, you can put a ‘made in usa’ sticker on it”

Say What?  I can buy all of the components overseas (providing gainful employment to thousands of orphans, widows and children)  and if I sit in my garage and attach the grip frame to the body, I can say it was made in America.

Its a little known secret, but some paintball manufacturers have unilaterally decided that PLACING THE PRODUCT IN THE BOX constitutes “assembly”.  I can’t think of anything that comes closer to outright fraud, but given the fact that the people engaged in such gray-area activity have been doing so for years (and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in product sales), its obviously ok with our government.

I can’t think of a single major manufacturer or distributor serving the industry that isn’t guilty of at least placing non-American Made parts into their American Made product;  that is if the whole damn thing isn’t made overseas.

Go take a look.  Think that Smart Parts Ions are all American Made?  How about Tippmann Model 98s?  Brass Eagle Markers?  WORR Games cockers?

You may be playing an American Made Sport, but you aren’t doing it with American Made Goods.  If that doesn’t bother you, chances are you’re getting an allowance from Mommy and Daddy.  When you grow up you’ll understand a lot better why outsourcing and letting foreign countries suck up all of our manufacturing capability isn’t a good thing.  When your allowance dries up because Mom and Dad need to make the mortgage payment, you’ll have some direct experience of why its not such a good idea to send all of your paintball money overseas. 

MORE 50′S PAINTBALL

Ever since some readers said that I was ‘stupid’ or ‘had too much time on my hands’ when I brought the possible existence of people playing paintball back in the 50s, I’ve re-doubled my research efforts.

I have found some very interesting teasers.  There is apparently much more to this than I had originally thought.  It seems that this is all tied in somehow with flying saucers and government cover ups.

I offer the following image of a 50s paintball gun – with a red paintball just exiting the barrel – as additional proof.

I’m really looking into this deeper and should have some more interesing images and information soon.