A history of Brass Eagle

[dartamon]

BTW, I'm browsing old APG issues - November 1996 introduces the Raptor.

[MrBarraclough]

"Poisonous" is very apt. I've never owned or used any BE products, but many in my age cohort did back in the 90s (I'm 39). I tend to think of everything Brass Eagle made from the Daisy acquisition onwards as mass-produced, cheap junk. I remember poring over the ads in APG as a teenager and dreaming of the day that paintball would become big and mainstream enough that I could just walk into a local store and buy gear off the shelf. BE made that dream a reality, but in the worst way, filling Walmart shelves with clamshell-packaged plastic junk. Most of it would never stand up to use actually playing paintball; it's real use seemed to be vandalism, shooting mailboxes and street signs and neighbors' cats. As someone who had really taken the "Be an ambassador for the sport" message to heart, I resented BE for fueling a rash of paintball misuse that made us all look bad and fueled calls for local bans.

The only goggle I've ever seen crack from a hit while playing was this late 90s BE model with this huge bubble lens. I shot my friend from well more than 10 feet in the back corner of that lens and the whole thing spiderwebbed. I've never seen polycarbonate do that.

Brass Eagle = plastic imitations of real paintball markers is an association that I doubt I'll ever get out of my head.

[dartamon]

Except for the ring that BE added Ed for the Eahleworks jewel.

[fg2chase]

Yep. Brass Eagle was briefly the US Distributor for WDP. They facilitated the construction of Hyperball fields at a number of family fun centers and miniature golf places during the late '90s, and the second generation Rainmakers even came with silver versions of WDP's Jacko Infinity Series barrels.

Can confirm, def have this barrel in front of me right now and it looks like my Angel LED barrel.

[Ironnerd]

By the way, I also found this article that I vaguely remember: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/...hen-a-crusader

BE had to have a massive recall of 248,000 markers plus a payout over launching CO2 cylinders. That may be why the corporate entity was sunset - became a liability over previous products.

In the aviation world, the valve would be safety-wired to the bottle to prevent this. This remains an issue with me. At the very least we should use torque stripe.
I remember trying to remove my HPA tank from my Desert Fox and the reg started unscrewing from the tank. That newly filled steel 48/3000 would have put a lot of hurt on the players around me. It took me and the field tech about ten minutes to get the thing off the ASA. For some reason it was just stuck. No damage to the ASA threads in the marker or the tank.

[Ironnerd]

I had one of those masks. It was actually really nice.Mine never had any issues, I just could never get a replacement lens for it, so I had to go JT.

[dartamon]

Also - Stingray II and Xtreme Vision 280 mask are released in 1997:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980114...light/be.shtml

[dartamon]

By the way, I also found this article that I vaguely remember: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/...hen-a-crusader

BE had to have a massive recall of 248,000 markers plus a payout over launching CO2 cylinders. That may be why the corporate entity was sunset - became a liability over previous products.

[dartamon]

It's actually really easy - just take a look at the archives of the Brass Eagle website. It had a major redesign in 1999, it's early snapshots show only the green Raptor, but by October of 99, both the Silver Eagle and Xtreme are listed:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991013...rasseagle.com/

They were available by the late 98, BE's website still had to catch up early in 99. Part of the reason why owner groups were so important in the late 90s is that BE's website sucked.

Here is the link to a "sneak peek" that Dave Brisco from Dangerous Toys gave to the Raptor Owner's Group around that time:

https://web.archive.org/web/19990508...HP/newline.htm

Its addition is referenced as 12/18/98 on the updates page: https://web.archive.org/web/19991009...HP/updates.htm

So the sneak release of the Silver Eagle and Xtreme around the 1998 holiday season sounds about right. But we can say that the Silver Eagle and Xtreme were mass introduced in 1999.

If someone wants to hunt a little more, figure out when the Xtreme and Silver Eagle got a double trigger/trigger guard combo, but still had a wire detent.

[dartamon]

Nope, first gen wire-detent Xtreme was released at the same time as the Silver Eagle. Second-gen with plastic detent same time as the second-gen Silver Eagle.

[Ironnerd]

We just got rid of our FAX machine about a month ago.

[Siress]

Some businesses really haven't updated their workflow from the days of faxing. Where I work, there has always been a fax number unique to each of us that will convert their incoming fax to a PDF and we get it as an email. And if we reply to the email, I think it's converted to a document and sent back to them as a fax with a full cover page.

[Ironnerd]

DOH... I can fix that.

It really isn't easy figuring out when some of these markers released. It's like it is a state secret or something. Maybe Brass Eagle was working for DARPA.

[The Inflicted]

That's correct - 97-98, Brass Eagle Angels. The Eagleworks barrel for the Rainmaker and the Raptor is a descendant of the Jacko barrels for Angels.

Also, the Raptor timeline - 96-97 Green, 98-00 Silver/Xtreme, LTD 2000 in 00. Might've still been some leftover production in 2001.

I don't think the Raptor Xtreme hit until 2000, and maybe not until 2001.

[Ironnerd]

Added to OP.
Thank-you.