The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 1982-1991
Lonnie Johnson's Super Soaker used air pressure to out-shoot every water gun
A bathroom nozzle accident became a pressurized water gun that sold 250 million units, made $1 billion, and entered the Toy Hall of Fame.
Larami Corp.
the move
In 1982 Lonnie Johnson was a nuclear engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on the Galileo Jupiter mission and tinkering at home with a heat pump that would use pressurized water instead of freon. A homemade nozzle at his bathroom sink sprang a leak and shot a powerful stream of water across the room — and Johnson realised the same idea could make a water gun that actually had range.
Every water gun before it was a weak pump-and-squirt toy. Johnson's design adds an air pump that pressurizes the water supply, so the gun stores energy before the trigger is pulled and fires with far greater distance and accuracy. He was granted his first squirt-gun patent on 27 May 1986 as US 4,591,071, and kept refining the idea while working on the Air Force's B-52 stealth bomber.
In 1989 he produced a working prototype, and Philadelphia toy maker Larami agreed to manufacture it, launching the toy as the Power Drencher before renaming it Super Soaker. It was an instant hit — about two million units sold in 1991 — and toy giant Hasbro bought Larami and the rights to the gun.
The Super Soaker went on to sell more than 250 million units and earn well over $1 billion, making it the best-selling water toy of all time, and it was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2015.
why it works
- Air pressure stores energy at fill time, so the trigger just releases it
- Distance and accuracy made it a genuinely new toy, not a squirt gun
- The NASA engineer background meant the mechanism was engineered, not improvised
- Hasbro's distribution turned a toy-fair novelty into a mass-market franchise
what transfers
Put the energy into the mechanism, not the user's arm: store pressure at fill time so the toy outperforms rivals and becomes the category's technical ceiling.
what came after
Hasbro kept the Super Soaker line alive for decades with new models, and it remains the best-selling water toy of all time, with more than 250 million units sold and over $1 billion in revenue. Johnson went on to hold more than 130 US patents and founded Johnson Research and Development; the pressurised-air mechanism became the template for the whole water-gun category.
references
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