Gender Reveal Fireworks

[jamisonlm3]

I've been asked to do a gender reveal, but after looking at what's available on the market, I'm not too impressed. It seems like the colors of cakes made just for gender reveal appear either dark blue or red from the videos I've seen. There are also cakes that, may or may not be for gender reveal, but offer just a single color.

Spirit of 76's pro line stuff, for example. Kellner's also carry cakes that are color specific such as the Neon stuff from Magnus and Liberty Bell's color specific fan cakes. Megabanger and Big also carry single color blue and pink cakes. Megabanger has Contry Boyz and Contry Girlz. Big has their Blue and Pink cakes, but the Blue cake is actually green (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REWn9DngKMA).

Dominator also has blue and pink cakes. Red Apple has their neon cakes and even canister shells. The videos of them seem very nice, especially the shells (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9h76qI3us). I could easily see a case of their neon cakes and shells shooting together. Too bad the nearest dealers are a minimum 6 hour drive.

Does anybody have any experience with any of the above or other gender reveal fireworks?

[FL Kevin]

I do a pink segment in my show every year for my mother in-law who is in remission from breast cancer. The Big's PINK has a nice neon pink color to it. World Class has a nice pink one called Awareness that I used before, Red Rhino Full Blow line is a washed out pink that doesn't stand out very well. If you have access to Dominator It's a girl is a nice 200 with some gold glitter that hits good along with Shocking pink a smaller 200 but looks good fired in multiples. This year a fired a few of Phantoms Pink 200 and they were impressive nice neon and a good pace.

Now as far as blue Saturn Sabotage from Cutting Edge is a nice 10 shot 200 with all blue breaks, It's a Boy from Dominator is another nice 200 it also has gold glitter. Other than those Red Rhino Full Blown series has a nice deep blue but I'm not sure they are making those any more.

[jknepp1954]

We have in the 500 gr cakes gender reveal - WINDA br. Fan style 25 sh - 5 shot at a time - they are indeed PINK and BLUE! Not red or green - unless you are colored blind! LOL

[jamisonlm3]

Awareness looks like a nice pink cake so does Big's Pink. I can probably find all of these locally since Big and Jakes's are common products around here. Phantom's stuff looks nice, but the prices are so high. $40 for a 200g cake is something I won't do. I can get 500g cakes for that price at the local stores.

jknepp1954, look at the video. That's green if I ever saw it. I'm guessing that was just a production mistake. I've heard blue is a hard color make in fireworks. For pinks looking like reds, thast most likely the camera.

I found another blue cake called 3 Wishes from Megabanger. It looks pretty good, with a mixture of different effects, but all of them with some blue.

[James76]

We use '76 Pro Line 36s Blue and 36s Pink for gender reveals. We recently created a couple off-the-shelf gender shows.

Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Pink (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT109_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)
Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Blue (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT108_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)

[jknepp1954]

Awareness looks like a nice pink cake so does Big's Pink. I can probably find all of these locally since Big and Jakes's are common products around here. Phantom's stuff looks nice, but the prices are so high. $40 for a 200g cake is something I won't do. I can get 500g cakes for that price at the local stores.

jknepp1954, look at the video. That's green if I ever saw it. I'm guessing that was just a production mistake. I've heard blue is a hard color make in fireworks. For pinks looking like reds, thast most likely the camera.

I found another blue cake called 3 Wishes from Megabanger. It looks pretty good, with a mixture of different effects, but all of them with some blue.
maybe vid shows green - but it is BLUE - trust me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
we shot both cakes at our demo last spring - if i can find and pinpoint the area of the vid of cakes i will post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ6mIvLI0jE&t=260s @ about the 5 min mark is gender reveal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ6mIvLI0jE

[Fulliautomatix]

We use '76 Pro Line 36s Blue and 36s Pink for gender reveals. We recently created a couple off-the-shelf gender shows.

Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Pink (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT109_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)
Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Blue (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT108_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)

Wow! That's cool!

https://www.76fireworks.com/_store/images/500/6947.pnghttps://www.76fireworks.com/_store/images/500/6949.png

[FL Kevin]

We use '76 Pro Line 36s Blue and 36s Pink for gender reveals. We recently created a couple off-the-shelf gender shows.

Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Pink (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT109_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)
Gender Reveal Fireworks Show - Blue (https://www.76fireworks.com/AT108_Gender_Reveal_Fireworks_Show)

I was just looking at that case yesterday, my daughter graduates from high school this year and she informed me she wants a show with just her school colors, Go figure one of those happen to be blue, the other is gold. I have lots of gold, blue not so much.

[Chiefsfan00]

I used two Awareness and two It's a girl by world class for a gender reveal before. I enjoyed both of them and have used Awareness in my regular firework shows as well.

[jamisonlm3]

The 76 gender reveal shows are really nice, but quite a bit more than what I was asked to do. As much as I'd like to do that, they're also several times what my budget is. I'm thinking of opening the cakes and refusing them. I have some yellow fast fuse. I could make a sorta 76 finale box. The whole thing wouldn't be anymore than 8 cakes.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

The 76 Pro line is awesome. You won't go wrong there. I've used both items shown here and they were great. I'm using the blue again this year in my show.

[jamisonlm3]

Time flies. Last Friday I got an envelope and this upcoming Tuesday will be the shoot day. They want to shoot at 7:30, but I'd rather shoot at 8:00. We'll see how that goes.

After much thinking, I've decided to do a little bit of a show for her. Everything being shot are 200g cakes with the finale also having two 500g cakes. A total of 19 cakes. A cheap 12 cue firing system with three 4 cue modules is what I'll be using. I wish it was the version you could map out multiple cues to one button, but I've already made a cheat sheet and I've got a fresh battery in my headlamp.

Because I have only 12 cues and 19 cakes, I'll have to fuse cakes up like shells in a rack. In order to so, I made a brass poke. I used it to enlarged the hole the stock fuse runs into and ran some of my fast fuse in. I poked around until I could hear the BP. Tape covers and secures it. I left about 4-5" to give me something to work with. Tuesday, I'll lay the fuses across one another and tape.

All the cakes are glued onto 1/2" plywood with liquid nails. That was done tonight so it would have time to set come Tuesday evening. I cut the paper and plastic covers off the bottom of the cakes and glued the clay plugged cardboard mortars down. If I was shooting on grass, I'd want thicker plywood, but these will be sitting on asphalt.

Now, I wait. This is the first time I've done something like this and I worry my cakes aren't going to shoot right. One will, but the other won't fire. I may run a secondary fuse into the cakes just as insurance. I keep worrying I didn't jam enough fuse into the holes I made or the cakes just aren't going to shoot. You guys ever felt like that?

[morrison2951]

Sounds like you"re well prepared- the shoot will go great!

[NWA_Fireworks]

I was just looking at that case yesterday, my daughter graduates from high school this year and she informed me she wants a show with just her school colors, Go figure one of those happen to be blue, the other is gold. I have lots of gold, blue not so much.

If you need blue and gold, check out It?s A Buck from Spirit of 76 under the Realtree brand. Blue breaks with a very nice gold glitter.
https://youtu.be/7glxn3IgQeg

[morrison2951]

Gold Rush from Brothers has awesome gold color breaks- mixed with blue and other colors as well.

[morrison2951]

Check that- it's Gold Rush from Winda. Awesome gold breaks mixed with blues and other colors.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Not sure why you're not using initiators, but other than that, it sounds like you're good to go.

[jamisonlm3]

No, I did unless you mean the MJG igniters. The firing sytem I got came with 12 1ft ones so those are the ones I used. I extended them with some cat5 utp that I cut into ~2ft pieces and seperated the 4 pairs. I was going to use some speaker wire I had, but I remember I had that old network cable. Next time I do it, I'll remember to not use the same color on the same module. That'll help troubleshooting things.

Yesterday, I arrived several hours early. I cut th tape and added a secondary fuse cut at a sharp angle into the holes I enlarged Sunday. After that, every exposed piece of fuse was covered with tape. A secondary fuse was also added to the main fuse, both cut at a sharp angle, pushed into the match's shroud, and taped. My thoughts on the secondary fuse, now that I think abouit it, is it was most likely not needed, but fuse is cheap and the added fire can't hurt. My big fear was a bad igniter.

They wanted to shoot at 7:30, but that didn't happen until shortly after 8:00, thankfully. I wasn't able to get any video, but some of them did. I'm trying to get a copy now, but from what I saw, it was mostly skypuke. I would've done things differently, now that I've done it, but they all seemed to like it so I guess it was a success. I'm not unhappy with the way things went. Everything shot, there was one flower pot from one of the cakes in the middle position, but nothing came off the plywood. The two 500g cakes I shot started to smoke pretty good, but were quickly doused with water.

All the cakes I shot were from Showtime except the 2 500g and another 2 200g cakes which came from seperate stores. I've always focused on shells, but the cakes didn't dissapoint. I'm glade I went with this instead of what I was planning early on. I even picked up a handful of other 200g cakes to shoot later in the year. If anything, I wouldn't have even got the 2 500g cakes. Those would've been replaced by two more 200g cakes for the finale. Lots of things I would've done differently, but this was a good experience none the less.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Yes.. I was referring to MJG initiators.

Glad to hear everything went well. Sounds like you learned a number of lessons and have more good ideas for your next shoot. That's a big part of doing what we do. Looking forward to seeing the video when/if you can find some from the guests.

[jamisonlm3]

Thanks, those will be what I'll use next time. Here's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3K8_sdyPAI&) the video and I'll post some pictures of what I had below. After watching the video, I could've easily stretched the show out another 30-60 seconds. Next time, I'll spread my cakes out much further than the 5 or so feet I had them at. Between the body and the finale where the mines shoot, I wish I had either gotten another 3 of them or something else fast shooting to replace them. Surprisingly, mine cakes around here are rare. If they had gone higher, I wouldn't have been so disappointed with them, but more of them would've been better.