OH come on (P1 Worcester News, Thursday, May 19) weren't some of your reporters lads in their long forgotten youth?

I loved my old pea-shooter. OK, I was told off by Mrs Browne next door for shooting haricot beans on to her lawn, but you can cause as much damage with a ballpoint pen case and chewed up paper as with a pea-shooter.

Stink bombs ponged a bit for four or five minutes but were generally regarded as harmless and never caused total mayhem.

The catapult that you show is about as puny as the one that I had when aged seven. I never harmed a thing with it and enjoyed using it until the knicker elastic broke within a couple of weeks.

Laser pens I can't vouch for as they were "before my time", but surely they would not have been on public sale for five or six years, if they were really harmful.

There is a difference between laddish and loutish behaviour. Let's allow the lads (and lasses) to have some fun with a few relatively harmless toys and get a bit more serious with the louts whose behaviour is a lot more serious than stink bombs, pea-shooters and (puny) catapults.

CHRIS REYNOLDS,

Worcester.