This guide is meant to help you make more informed decisions when buying fireworks and to get better and cheaper fireworks. This is mainly for buying at stands, if you are buying mail order or whatever, this will not be as useful to you. This reflects my own personal opinions and experience, but is not The Complete And Ultimate Guide To Buying Fireworks. Your own personal experience is the most helpful thing you can have.
This is divided into different kinds of fireworks and specific tips for each. I don't have every kind of firework, for example, I don't have anything on smoke devices or tanks, but I have all the fireworks that really matter.
Firecrackers
There isn't really a big difference between different brands of firecrackers, but next year (unless I forget!) I will buy some of every brand I find and do a comparison test. From my personal experience, my favorite firecrackers are Zebras. They seem to be louder and more powerful than other brands, and have fairly long paper fuses when unraveled compared to others. Mighty Mites have very short fuses, and with how fast paper fuses burn, the longer fuse on Zebras is nice. One brand I strongly recommend you avoid for firecrackers is Great Grizzly. In my experience with them this year, the fuses have been unreliable, they were quieter and less powerful than Zebras, and often had "end pops" when stuck into soft dirt.
Bottle Rockets
Bottle rockets are another thing like firecrackers; there is not a huge difference from brand to brand. The main differences are whistling or not. Some whistle, some don't, and some have three whistles. This mainly comes down to personal preference. I don't like whistling bottle rockets for general use, but they greatly enhance the Can o Rockets. If you want rockets to take apart for powder however, get whistling. Whistle mix (70/30% [by weight] Potassium Perchlorate and Sodium Benzoate) is a powerful powder when loose, and whistles when packed (like in a rocket!). I did a comparison of Air Traveler bottle rockets (not whistling) and Mad Dog whistling bottle rockets in cobs. The Mad Dog powder worked quite well, but the Air Traveler didn't even explode, it just acted like a fountain or rocket.
Ground Spinners
If not for a pleasant surprise this 4th, I would have had almost nothing to say in this category. Up until very recently, there were only two brands of small spinners and one of large ones. The small spinners are fused together in packs of 16; the most common name for them is Jumping Jacks. There are two brands, but they are identical. Ground Blooms (aka Ground Flowers) pretty much have a monopoly on larger spinners that are set off individually and are about 2 inch by Ôø‡ of an inch. There are two kinds of ground flowers; I think the same company makes both of them. The common ones are pink/red but there are also green ones that crackle at the end. Which one is better is personal preference, but I like the crackle at the end. This year I found a new entry in the jumping jacks category. Black Cat, one of the most widely known names in fireworks, now makes them. They come in 50 packs like firecrackers instead of 16 packs. What makes them good is that the first few actually "jump" and go flying through the air and that the last few crackle. The flying ones definitely make this more dangerous than traditional jumping jacks, so stay a ways away from them.
Helicopters
Almost everyone is familiar with the "Smalls Bees", generally just called bees. These are pretty much the only helicopters this size. When you get to the larger sizes there are many different kinds however. I've never gotten a bad one, but there are some that stand out as being particularly good. The spinners in the plastic cases that look like pills (colors vary, white/red and white/blue are common) are usually very good. They produce a lot of colored sparks and get good altitude. Buzz Bombs are another good kind. They are the only helicopters that have a report at the end and make a lot of orange/yellow sparks on ascent. These in particular need at flat, hard launch surface to reach max altitude. The report at the end is quite loud, but it can be rather inconstant. I've heard people claim that a Buzz Bomb is as powerful as an M-80, if anyone says that, they obviously don't know what they're talking about.
Fountains
There are several kinds of fountains. They all do the same thing, but look different. There are cylindrical, cone, cake and what I will call "assorted". Cylindrical and cone fountains are both single bore/hole (the place effects come out). Cylindrical fountains are often two tubes, one big one on the outside so it looks big and fancy, and a smaller internal tube with the actual powder. Cone fountains are less common, but in my experience have more powder in them (remember however, this varies wildly from brand to brand). Cake fountain is a name I made up, but it refers to multi-tube fountains. They are made this way partially to look more exciting and make people think it's a cake, but also so they have more effects and stages. They are usually pretty good, at least as effects go, as for height, any type can go high and you can't tell what will and wont from looking at it. "Assorted" fountains are oddly shaped and don't fit into any other category. A good example of this is the Black Cat Silver Fan, shown below. The fan design allows several fountains inside it to combine into a nice fan-shaped shower of sparks. For all fountains, pick them up before paying. Some are very light because they are almost empty. If it's too light, get a different one. If it's heavy, that's a good sign, but don't think all the weight is powder. They often have clay bases for stability and also to make people think "Wow! Feel how heavy that is! It must have a lot of powder in it!"
Rockets
Rockets include any rocket bigger than a bottle rocket, which have their own category. In my experience, most rockets are not very good. I know this is not true in the UK, as I have seen videos of some very good rockets, but most sold in the US suck. The liftoff is often good, with lots of sparks and sometimes a whistle, but payloads are usually very small and just pop out the end instead of an actual break like with a cake shell. There are a few decent rockets that can be found in the US however, but they are rare. It is very difficult to tell from looking at a rocket if it is good or not, so you just have to get lucky for the most part. Some rockets have fins instead of sticks and are then called missiles, but they aren't special enough for their own category! Every missile I have ever seen has sucked. My recommendation for rockets/missiles is unless you are a big fan, only get a few, if any. One exception would be if you were going to modify them. They usually have plenty of space for custom payloads, especially larger ones. Adding flash powder payloads to rockets would definitely be very nice and would make buying them worth it. One more thing, when buying rockets, bigger is almost never better! Pictures below show a rocket and how little powder/stars they have inside.
Roman Candles
In the UK, roman candles (I'm just going to call them candles from now on) are long, large bore tubes firing shells. Basically a vertical cake and not a candle. Here in the US however, we have real candles. They are usually 14-18 inches long and Ôø‡ inch in diameter. They usually have 8 or 10 shots and instead of firing shells, they fire stars with various effects like crackle, glitter and reports. They are not supposed to be held in your hands when firing them, but everyone does and they are made so they can be. My recommendations are just not to buy candles that only have one effect and that the Black Cat Handful is very good.
Comets
Consumer class comets are kind of rare, and are generally in cakes. I don't recommend they be used alone because they are usually not very exciting, but they would be a nice compliment to other fireworks like cakes going off at the same time for a nice show.
Mines
For those of you who don't know, a mine is sort of a combination between an aerial shell and a shotgun. All the starts are shot out of the tube ignited in a shotgun sort of way. I have never seen a mine for sale in the US, but I know they are available in the UK. Having said that, I don't really have any recommendations for them!
Cakes
There are so many cakes and they vary by so much that it is hard to make any special recommendations. One thing you should always do is look at the tubes. Look at the pictures below. The two on the left have all the space filled with tubes. The far left is an 87 shot, so most tubes are small and contain stars or other effects but no shells. The outside tubes are bigger with shells. The 2nd from the left has 19 shots and each tube is a good size. The next two use a very common technique. As you can see, it is a ring of tubes with a big empty space in the middle. It makes them look big, but they are not all tubes like the left two. 3rd from the left has 16 shots; it looks much bigger than the 19 shot, but actually had less shells. The cake farthest right is very tall, but that doesn't mean it's any better. It has a large empty space in the middle and there are 8 tubes that are larger in diameter than usual. I'm not saying don't buy cakes with the empty space in the middle; I'm just saying you should notice it so you don't get pissed off later. Picking up cakes to feel how much powder there is doesn't help. Cakes have a heavy clay base to help prevent them from tipping over while firing. The actual weight of the powder is probably 10% or less of the total weight of some cakes, but this varies from cake to cake.
Shells
Shells are another thing that, as far as I know are not allowed in the UK. I guess "they" don't trust people to load their own shells. In the US we have a large variety, and as with cakes, there are so many, with many variations it is hard to make any very significant recommendations. On-box descriptions never help very much, but you can get a general idea of what the shells do. One big choice is single, double, or triple break shells. Single break shells usually have a bigger break than multi-break shells, but that is not a given. Personally, I think single and double are good, but I wouldn't buy too many triples except to use as a sky-filling finale because the effects are usually not as good. Buying brand names doesn't always mean better fireworks, but this is often forgotten when people buy shells. When I went to Boom City (a place on the Indian reservation near my house where fireworks are sold) I saw many people who bought the TNT Prime Time pack, which contains 36 shells. I have seen them, and they are good, but buying two 18 packs of a lesser known brand would probably be cheaper and almost, if not equally, as good. The picture below shows a launch tube and various shells.
