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Over the next 6 years the Enola Gaye brand continued to grow adding the MK5 Thunderflash, BB Grenade and a larger smoke grenade to the to the product line, but like any successful business it needed a strong team to guide it though rough times and when the mighty Hot Shots started to show cracks Enola Gaye in turn started to get a rough ride, added with UK supplier issues, factory arguments and differences between directors, a long story abbreviated meant that Enola Gaye had to either close forever or be re-invented and so we cut our ties with our UK factory. The original business plan didn’t even have smoke grenades written into it, but whilst trying to bring the paper mache paint grenade to market the friction smoke grenade was devised and offered as another product line to paintball sites in the UK. The original Enola Gaye factory was based in Lincolnshire, England where we started to manufacture the very first smoke grenades dedicated for use in paintball games, rather than the grey imports available from the USA or cheap smoke bombs offered by the various firework companies at the time.
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We do not brandish our name about to glorify war only to serve as an education and remembrance for those who fought for us and of course continue to fight for us in current conflicts. We have since removed the lady logo (devised by the original directors) that was similar to the one painted on the side of the plane and have adopted the mind set that it serves as good education for those not to forget. It was fair to say that in the early days nobody expected the product to take off like it did a brand name change was discussed during 2005, but the market recognised the name so well, it was deemed commercial suicide to do so. The decision to name the new company Enola Gaye would have come from the flamboyance of the original directors whilst it seem slightly controversial the name had a catchy ring to it, which in an already controversial ‘at the time’ paintball industry seemed to fit. Since this new business venture was a product rather than a service a new company was needed to promote the product Hot Shots Paintball was already a successful brand in itself so a new company identity was needed to front this idea. Either way the idea had captured the eyes of the original directors of Hot Shots Paintball in Newbury and the new version was on the drawing board. It is not certain wether the original paint grenade manufactured Astra was actually offered to the paintball industry as a genuine consumable product, it may well have just been a firework/pyrotechnic placed on the market as a gimmick firework. Previously the former Astra Fireworks had offered a similar pyrotechnic made from polystyrene which was painted black, but blasted into thousands of un-biodegradeable white pieces, this was unrealistic for paintball fields looking to keep their woodlands tidy under the watchful eyes of the UK’s tough planning councillors. The brand was founded in 1996 with the idea to manufacture a pyrotechnic paint grenade that looked similar to the real thing and was biodegradable the idea was to make a product from pressed paper pulp, similar to an egg box. Enola Gaye is Europes longest serving pyrotechnic company manufacturing pyrotechnics for the paintball and airsoft industries.