"Boga" (PVC Cannons) Revisited
It was last last year when everyone sought this hell of a kind toy.
Known for its popular bazooka-looking device, "Boga", or PVC cannon, was made from PVC pipes that uses denatured alcohol and a stove lighter to produce a booming sound. It was at first used by young adults and teenagers who, desperate enough to create an alternative to fireworks, opted to use PVC, some old toys, denatured alcohol and lighter to fire with. But then, most of its users were kids, just like the picture shown above, who were fond of firing this once very popular noisemaker during holiday season especially when fireworks and noise barrage for the new year have always been anticipated in the community.
For sure most remember that during the past people in the provinces were just simply using bamboo and using fire to blow it off, firing cans or stones just like the old cannons used in the civil war movies. This kind of idea somehow was revived by that PVC cannon as it sets off a loud explosion when the user squirts denatured alcohol at the tail end of the pipe and then lights up the mixture with a cigarette lighter or a gas stove igniter that can be activated at the click of a triggering mechanism.
Unfortunately, the Health Department ordered the use of PVC Cannons be banned due to its loudness and like firecrackers, safety problems such as the use of denatured alcohol and fire as its mechanism. Since most of its victims were once peeped through the PVC when it failed to explode. And if backfired, it cause injuries to their eyes like post traumatic conjunctivitis, which, when not treated immediately, may eventually lead to blindness.
Quite sad, as well as weird so to speak that once there was a new year's toy supposedly made as an alternative to the usual fireworks. Children nowadays perhaps are being obliged to use horns for New Year's day, while others tend to fire smuggled firecrackers, whose the sales of which also killing the local fireworks industry.
But then despite these, few would still enough adventurous to make and fire PVC Cannons for new year, this time careful enough to prevent injuries.