I appreciate sprinklers too. I especially had a fondness for the Poppy our neighbor down 2 houses when I was a kid. I thought the tires on it were cool. They were the proper scale for the size of the sprinkler.
We had a cast iron traveling sprinkler. It weighed a ton. You layed out the hose and connected the sprinkler to the end, then set it up so the front, of 3 wheels, was on the hose. Then it would slowly move, propelled by the water, using the hose as a track. It looked like a small tractor. It could be funny if the sprinkler came off the "track" and started going what ever direction. And if you forgot to turn it off it would come up to the faucet or whatever until it got stuck. lol. If the groung got soaked or it was on a hill it was known to fall over. lol.
No, the Poppy was cool. It didn't move unless you moved it. And it didn't weigh in as compared to an engine block(not fun to drop on your foot or trip over when walking through the yard at night, Damn IT!). Plus the Pink Panther used one in those infamous cartoons to paint a room once. I've occasionally thought how "free style" that would be to hook up a pressured painting system to a Poppy sprinkler and turn it on in a room for like a minute and see what the effect is. sigh, one of these days, one of these days.
Also fond of the plastic Nelson Oscillating sprinklers. The small ones. They are quiet, gentle, light weight, slow, fun to jump through. And they have a dial so you can choose the pattern. It is like a timer,- sophisticated.
Don't care for the pulsating sprinklers. Too noisey. don't work for small areas. Hard to run through. Ugly. looks like an Anorexic duck.
The multi pattern models were cool. you simply turned the top and chose a pattern you liked out of like 8 choices. No moving parts here but practical.
Soaker hoses were weird. They made a hissing sound and It looked like a rotten hose with leaks , EVERYWHERE. And they didn't water evenly.
