I remember growing up we had plenty of neat gadgets and toys to play with, like the NES, Transformers, GiJoe, He-Man and more. One of the things I can remember was a cool game called Lazer Tag. One year my parents bought it for my brothers and I, plus my aunts and uncles bought it for their kids, so we kinda had a small army going on hehe.

Not all the kids had the same gear however, but it really made the game a lot more enjoyable. The game was pretty simple, everyone had a sensor somewhere on there vest and it had maybe 6 hit points. When you hit a sensor it would make a noise, but the last shot on one would be a series of long beeps. The player who had used up their hit points had to sit out. The pistols came with a small red dot laser sight. All you had to do was squeeze the trigger slightly and the dot would appear. The sensors all had flashing lights so if you played at night like we did, you could always see someone coming. Below are some equipment we had, plus some that we didn't.




I think this was the basic setup that you got when you bought the game. It came with a pistol, sensor, and the basic black vest. This was what we had, plus a silver one, called the Starvest Vest. I liked the silver vest better because it was easier to put on plus it seemed to stay on you better. Below is a pic of the vest:



The pistol seemed to always lose it's battery cover. We usually played at night so it would sometimes fall off in the heat of battle. There were times when you couldn't find the cover, so we just got out some aluminum foil, folded it, and taped it to the back of the gun. This worked but you was always having to push the batteries back into the gun because they would become loose from all the running around. Here is a better pic of the pistol with a sensor:



The next pic is of the laser tag rifle,called the Starlyte Pro. My cousin owned one and it was sweet. It's funny because the sensor he wore was from a GiJoe lazer tag game, and our guns would work with it, but it was hard to hit. He basically had the best gun and sensor, so he was hard to take down. The Starlyte Pro had a switch that turned it from semi-automatic to fully automatic. The batteries wouldn't last long in fully automatic mode, so you would use that option if you just wanted to mow a few down that came in too close.

The next items are some of the sensor gear. The two we had was the helmet and the hat. The bad thing about these 2 pieces was that they were more sensitive than the small velcro sensors, so you really didn't have to aim to hit someone wearing these. Just had to kinda shoot in their general direction. I had two cousins that used these and most of the time wanted to trade out with one of our vests because they were usually the ones taken out of the game first.



The next item was one that none of us owned. It was called the starbase and it basically had a lot of hit points so it took a lot of shots to bring it down. It would have been pretty cool to own two of these to place at each base. We pretty much just ran around firing at each other, but that was fun too. Here is the Starbase:



Below is the StarSlinger and StarTalk, pretty much a gun sling and two walkie talkies. We didn't have these, but the kit we had came with a sling. I never used a sling because I literally didn't have time, I had fire coming from all directions and had to play with my guns a blazing.



Lazer Tag also had a cartoon, puzzles and a few toys I think. There have been other laser tag type games like laser challenge, but they just didn't feel as cool as the original. This game is just a drop in the bucket to the games, toys and hobbies that I grew up playing. The company that made laser Tag, Worlds of Wonder eventually went under but their toys live on in the minds of people like me who loved to play it on warm summer nights. This is article is my first, and I am in no way a great writer. I've read articles and watched videos on this site for over a year and finally got the nerve to post my own. Later all, and thanks for reading!