Stomp Rocket
A foam rocket on a launch tube, a plastic air bladder on the ground, and one instruction: jump on it. The Stomp Rocket sent a rocket a couple of hundred feet up with nothing but a kid's body weight, and it has been landing on neighbors' roofs since 1993.
The Stomp Rocket is about as simple as a flying toy gets. A hollow foam rocket slides over a launch tube; the tube connects by a hose to an air bladder lying flat on the lawn; a kid runs up and stomps on the bladder, the air rushes up the tube, and the rocket goes. No batteries, no propellant, no strings, and the harder you stomp, the higher it flies. The idea has an ancestor in a late-1970s plunger-launched toy called the Astroblast, but the stomp version is the one that stuck.
It came from a small family company. D&L Company built its first stomp rocket in the early 1990s and, by its own account, was founded in 1993 in Minden, Nevada, where it is still based. The Stomp Rocket name is a trademark held by the company's president, Fred Ramirez, and the line grew into a range of sizes, from a Junior model that flies about 100 feet to a high-performance version rated for about 400 feet. Millions have sold.
What made it a 90s backyard fixture was the physics lesson hiding inside the fun. Little kids could launch it, bigger kids could compete on height and distance, and everyone learned about launch angles from the rocket that sailed over the fence. That is the same pitch the company makes now, and in 2021 the whole line was authenticated by STEM.org as educational, but for most people who grew up with it the Stomp Rocket is remembered for one thing: the satisfying thump of the stomp, and craning your neck to find the rocket against the sky.
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