06 January 2023

Inventions in Everything: The Snowball Shotgun

With big winter storms having dumped tons of snow across much of the United States, what to do with all that snow has become a challenge for many Americans. What they won't be doing however is using J.W. O'Dell's 1952 invention, for which he was awarded with U.S. Patent 2,607,333: The Snowball Gun.

It's not because the idea of a snowball gun isn't popular. Amazon alone carries a least a dozen different kinds of snow-propelling toys, including blasters, slingshots, cannons, throwers, et cetera. However they all share one key characteristic. They are unmistakably toys.

By contrast, Figure 1 of O'Dell's snowball gun patent clearly envisions what we'll describe as a short, double-barreled snowball shotgun.

U.S. Patent 2,607,333 Figure 1

That's the kind of toy that could convince store clerks to hand over the contents of their cash registers. Not that O'Dell envisioned such an outcome. The patent's abstract indicates he saw his concept of a snowball gun as a source of good clean fun.

This invention is for a toy gun for projecting snow pellets. The object of the device is a toy designed to be charged with loose snow and to form and project the same in the form of pellets. A further object of this device is to provide the user with considerable action by providing two parallel barrels to provide harmless amusement.

Then again, his invention was conceived in a very different time. Check out the following video with some select toy commercials from the 1950s and 1960s.

With that kind of big-toymaker marketing, the snowball shotgun would hardly have stood out in the market.

Inventions in Everything: The Archives

Ready to sample more of the most creative designs and patents the Inventions in Everything team has explored? Our archives celebrate inventions ranging from the whimsical to the inspired in reverse chronological order!

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