Paintball Digest. Richard Sapp

      Paintballs: Yep. The founders played with the real thing, actual paint goop that took turpentine to dissolve. That’s good for your soft skin and baby-face complexion! According to 64-year-old Nelson Paint , the original paintball supplier, Charles Nelson was the first person to develop a ball of paint that could be shot out of a CO2 marker. Timber cruisers – men who surveyed woodlots and decided how much and what quality timber was available for cutting – used these first paintballs for marking trees. (Nelson still makes oil-based paintballs for timber cruisers.) With names like Chaos, Fury, Anarchy and Upheaval, today’s water-based Nelson balls scrub off with soap and water. Unlike the early versions, these balls are almost perfectly round, and if stored properly, they stay that way.

      Headgear: Early players might have worn baseball caps and maybe some protective goggles from the hardware store or just their own glasses. Today, no one – field owner, player, judge, photographer or observer – is allowed on an active field without complete face, ear and, if possible, neck protection. Today’s players wear safety gear designed specifically for paintball, like Raven ’s NVX, an adjustable combo facemask, eyeshade and lens system.

      Clothing: Blue jeans, tee shirts and tennis shoes or long sleeve tan work shirts and leather boots were the fashion on early fields. Old clothes were mixed with WW II army surplus woodland camo and tiger stripe from Viet Nam, feeding an early and unfavorable reaction to survival paintball games as militaristic, shabby and lower class. Certainly not a game for respectable families. Then, starting in the early 1980s, entrepreneurs like Jim Crumley (Trebark), Bill Jordan (Realtree and Advantage) and Toxey Haas (Mossy Oak) realized there was a men’s market for boutique camo patterns, primarily in the hunting field. For its first decade, camo was the paintball garment standard. You still see old clothes and camo on the playing fields, but a whole new style has developed for paintball. Radical rap! These days, hot colors and bright, fun patterns are standard on playing fields. JT USA’s Yellow Flame jersey and gloves, special all-purpose shoes with cleats, and black sock hats from Ronin Gear emphasize the development of merchandise for what has become a young person’s market. Ain’t no more shabby chic except at your local rec ball field.

       PAINTBALL TIME CAPSULE

      Paintball as an individual survival game was based in the socially and politically turbulent ‘70s, but this was also a time of extreme technological innovation. To understand the debate that is the foundation of our game, here is a quick look at some of the background events that shaped it and the men and women who developed it.

      Paintball took off in popularity in the mid-1980s. Economically, those were boom times. The stock market got bullish and stayed that way. Money, happiness and prosperity seemed within the grasp of every citizen. And there was trouble in the Soviet Union’s international worker’s paradise because “The Wall” between East and West Berlin was going to fall this decade, something baby boomers, the children born in the decade immediately following World War II, never thought they would live to see. And almost immediately, our game began to change from an individual survival event to a team-oriented game of paintball.