When toy guns were fine...

[Timeslipper]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

I had a rifle that had a record disc inside it, it had a large speaker in the butt, and it played random sounds, I recall it being of the sub machine gun style, but it had sounds from a typical western ricochet Winchester, so I used to try and get by that one to the real machine gunning noise, odd toy - think it was battery, but can't find it online - Mattel did a similar one.

[KromeDome]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

My brother and I plus about a dozen other boys in the neighborhood fought a thousand wars around our house - my poor mother! Anyways, we had everything from plywood cutout shapes of machineguns to broken bb guns to the upper-middle-class kids with the store-bought M16s with the spring action and rat-a-tat-tat sounds.

One time, we spotted these spring-action machineguns (but not the M16s) at the department store and really howled for them. To our delight, we each got one! All the way home in the back of the stationwagon with the window down, we were in "Where Eagles Dare" (the snow-plow getaway scenes) as we practically wore-out those guns as we sprayed imaginary bullets all over the place. IMAGINE THAT THESE DAYS!

Before those two fancy guns, we'd "borrow" plastic lemons and limes from mom's fake fruit bowl - perfect grenades. A plastic banana was a sidearm! A note on those plywood cutouts: My dad used a jigsaw to cut out of plywood his idea of a machinegun - one each for my brother and myself. All the kids wanted to use them - even the "rich" kid let me use that sweet M16 for my non-mechanical, flat piece of plywood. "Sucker" I thought at the time, but I realize now that for those boys - especially the one whose parents bought him things rather than PLAY with him - it was about my father having made them for us with his hands and his love. Those boys wanted to touch even a little piece of that. Damn my eyes for the times I lamented our barely-clinging-to-middle-class lifestyle. I was so wealthy and only realized it many years later!

[Heather74]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

Oh ping pong guns. Remember getting a pair on a school trip. A girl threatened to tell on us for having them.

So we shot her.

1970's

[Mulletino]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

I also had a toy SLR - it had the bullets that you loaded into the clip and then fired. Back when toys were allowed to launch missiles/bullets etc before all the kids got wrapped in cotton woll like they are nowadays. Looking at the pic posted earlier it was also the Airfix one on the left. Spent many an hour over the common playing war with that, we had bunkers and everything.

[scotchmist]

Toy Guns

I was in a toy shop recently and I noticed an absence of toy guns.....I'm not talking about fantastic space/lazer/water guns I'm talking about toy replica guns. I can remember in the 1970's my cousin had a replica revolver with a replica silencer....a real killing machine! Has anybody seen anything like this in toy shops recently?

[Trickyvee]

Re: Toy Guns

Even though I'm a girl, I had a toy gun. It was like a cowboy's pistol and very ornate (but plastic!). My uncle who lived in the flat upstairs bought it for me. There's a story behind it as when he died a few years ago and we were clearing out his flat we found a real cowboy pistol! He'd bought it in the 60's when he was a sailor in America for self-protection, but had told my mam (his sister) that he'd thrown it in the Tyne years earlier to get rid of it. We got the police to come and dispose of it and the guy who came was amazed to see such a relic. It was even loaded! Turned out he'd been practicing shots down the docks.

[Richard1978]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

I remember reading about families of WWII veterans finding stashed "war trophies" when having a house clearence

One of the worst I've heard of was an old soldier using live hand grenades as book ends!

[darren]

Re: Toy Guns

I was in a toy shop recently and I noticed an absence of toy guns.....I'm not talking about fantastic space/lazer/water guns I'm talking about toy replica guns. I can remember in the 1970's my cousin had a replica revolver with a replica silencer....a real killing machine! Has anybody seen anything like this in toy shops recently?

must admit im in toy shops a lot.
And its true there is such a lack of toy guns.
i remember in the eighties there where tons of toy guns in local shops here.
over the last say 15 yrs you do not see them probably because the goverment think kids having them will mean they will get bad ideas and get real ones.
health and safety has a lot to answer as well.

[sf1378]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

My Dad used to buy me toy guns as a lad. Cap firing ones with spools of caps and the circular cap rings too. Loved the latter ones as it seemed all the more realistic having the chamber revolve with each shot. I also had sparker guns like the translucent ones shown, bought from Trents, cheapo plastic ones with targets you could fire at and you put plastic darts with suckers on the end of them and POW! Had ping - pong guns, well I remember having a BIG one that fired normal sized ping - pong balls which I got when Mum or Dad bought a set with a smaller red gun and a blue gun and smaller balls, my Sister took the red one but sadly the blue one was faulty so Dad went back the same afternoon and came back with ONE gun...for ME. ha ha.

I also had rifles too. A Winchester style one made of plastic which broke naturally and later a black plastic M - 16....Again, it broke. One of my favourite Chrimbo pressies I've only just recalled whilst typing was an U.S. style green helmet with chinstrap and it had an inner plastic net piece to comfort the head, and a green plastic machine gun you could add a longer barrel and stock to, it had translucent side bits and made noise and sparks when 'fired'...well cool.

Up until the early 1990s there were loads of gun sections in toy depts. I particularly remember Toys R Us in Reading having an immense section and all the guns looked extremely realistic. Some of the best I saw were a Luger P - 08, a 44 MAGNUM Dirty Harry style with capacity for 12 or 25 cap ring!!! A beautiful Winchester style rifle from Daisy, an American firm that had metal and wooden parts...they were all really heavy and cool. I did notice around that time the encroaching of safety and the inclusion of orange plugs in the barrel to denote it was still a toy....

Nowadays the only cap guns you see are Cowboy style ones and if not they are brightly coloured plastic to show its a TOY...I get a Heckler and Koch style MP machine gun from an Open Market in town a few years back, its got sounds and a flashing muzzle, optional stock, silencer and 'sight' and has a button to press for a red beam like lazer targeting too....I'd get arrested or SHOT if I went round town with it as it may be plastic but it is realistic from a distance....when I bought it I made sure no one saw it in the bag...!

Edison Giocatoli in Italy are still one of the BEST firms; their double - barrelled shotgun made of metal and faux wood is amazing to look at....

The closest to cap guns we have now are battery power water machine guns and NERF guns which still sell well, Nerf being the more powerful brand....Ah, happier, simpler times...

[KromeDome]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

LOL! "So we shot her" Made my night! HaHaha - Just visited this site again and saw this "guns" one... Yeah - toy guns are "bad". Tell you what, the historical record will show - does show, actually - that kids of MY generation were literally awash in toy guns, war toys - the lot - and right here in the USA. OUR generation was not the one shooting up schools or "capping" rivals for some girls' affection. THOSE boys and young men came LATER, when God was scrubbed out of school, and "gun" was made a four-letter word. They tried to pacify and even medicate the "boy" out of these felllows and so they grew up without a way to cut loose and also not able to realize what guns were really all about. My dad and other neighborhood dads had closets with rifles and shotguns. I never heard of any kids shooting themselves or playmates. We KNEW that real guns were serious business and understood what they could do. We fought with fists, not knives or handguns. What happened later to screw things up wasn't GUN control, rather it was the attempts at BOY control. God bless their hearts, those little guys. No God, few fathers around, and being told that their aggression was "bad"... ah, those little guys...

[victorbrunswick]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

Some fifteen years ago I was at a liquor store and passed by the revolving rack where the cheapo plastic toys were. One of them caught my eye. It was a cap gun that was a scaled-down but surprisingly detailed replica of a Japanese Type 14 pistol from WWII for only 95p! Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to pick it up at the time. To this day I'd still like to find me that toy Nambu.

[I. R. Fincham]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

Oh, toy guns. That takes me back. Among my toys I had:

- a toy rifle. An airgun that fired little plastic pellets. It came with a target that could be knocked down. It was actually a pretty accurate weapon. I could hit the target accurately from the next room.

- a spy set, including a spring loaded pistol that actually fired plastic bullets, and a derringer concealed in a plastic cigarette case, which could shoot a bullet when you pressed a button on the case.

No point having a toy gun that doesn't actually shoot.

[BMS]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

I've been milling about this site for the best part of today, I've become quite addicted, from water slide transfers, to russell spinners, old packaging & all sorts of blasts from the past that I'd long forgotten. I just remembered a toy gun thing which I've had trouble searching for, it was a rifle with its own kind of range which as far as I remember was constructed of painted grey metal which at the end was a perspex screen which you slotted target cards behind. Now the funny thing is I remember the function but not what it was called, there was a mechanical pin behind where you put the target and when you pulled the trigger it pulled the pin forward & punctured a hole in the card where you aimed it from behind, so it looked like you had actually shot the target, possibly made by MB Games or Action GT.

[Heather74]

HI BMS, I'm thinking Sport Trainer ? http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=toy...40%3B800%3B354

Some good pictures and description http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-60...item1c33f56211

[escorteclipse1990]

Re: When toy guns were fine...

I had a spud gun that looked like the real thing.