Never did have any of those growing up, but Rick Gilbert did have a Johnny Seven OMA as well as a spring loaded bazooka that fired plastic shells.
However, Santa Claus did bring me a full size Parris-Dunn training rifle like this one year:
At the end of Dennis Avenue and across a bean field was a stash of World War II searchlights that we fought mock battles around, atop and through.
Ah, those were the days.
16 comments:
As a kid, I had the Thompson - great toy.
There must be something to all that hubbub about kids and toy guns - look how I turned out.
None of those could lay a glove on my "Mattel Thunderburp".
It was even a big hit one day at my school's "show and tell". Can you imagine a kid taking one to school these days? The little tyke would be in "supermax" before you could say "zero tolerance".
My first toy gun was a 1/3 scale tripod mounted water-cooled Browning....dad bought it when I turned 3 (LBJ in the WH)and still has most of the parts out in the shed. No idea who made it, but looking at my life since, I'd have to agree with SGT Vanderboegh's comment re: growing up with simulated equipment for a heavy weapons platoon!
BoarHawg
That brings back memories.
I had the "Johnny Reb" cannon, & the Mattel "private eye" kit.
I've STILL got the badge w/my 10-year-old face on the ID.
I'm in my late 30s and I still play with toy guns. I own several military vehicles that are in various stages of restoration, as well as two dummy M60 MGs and a full size steel M2HB dummy for displays at shows. The older I get, the more "toy guns" I want to own (not the mention the real ones!).
Wow, talk about bringing back memories. The training rifle I had looked real aside from an orange plastic non-removable cartridge which could be seen after pulling back the bolt.
I also had a toy Kentucky rifle made of wood which went with me on a 1000-mile plane ride. I hand-carried it from the car all the way to the luggage counter in Denver Airport and no one thought a thing of it. I was not allowed to carry it on-board, not because of security concerns but only because it was too long. (It really was a long thing, taller than I was at that age.) The airline staff wrapped, taped, and labeled it to make sure it arrived in the correct place with our other luggage. Even then, both ends of the toy rifle remained exposed and not one person raised an eyebrow when I carried it out of the airport. My how times have changed.
I'm afraid I fairly spoiled Matt. I built him a 1919A4 with tripod; a 60mm mortar out of pipe that, with the help of flash powder cartridges, launched empty grout tubes; and the backyard magnet for all the neighborhood kids -- a full sized 57mm anti-tank gun that used a table saw mechanism with hand cranks to achieve elevation and traverse. Unfortunately, I was never able to make it go "boom!" like the mortar. I'm sure the neighbors appreciated that.
Yep, memories indeed. Pericles, I think that how we all 'turned out' is exactly why the antigunners are worried - they know they can't control us!
I can remember as a kid that the gun aisle of the toy store was usually one of the biggest - we had some good ones, too: a 1/2 scale MG-34 with a revolving belt, a 1/2 scale Browning M 1919 that had a spent shell on a little spring arm, so it looked like it was ejecting spent brass when fired, etc.
One Christmas I got a toy .30 cal tripod-mounted machine gun. It actually had a magazine that slipped into a slot on top, and the last "round" had a rubber band that kept tension on the rest of the ammo. The ammo (about 10 rounds)was brass-painted wood with black rubber tips. And it was fired by turning a crank on the right side. As the crank turned, it pulled back a spring-loaded "paddle" that snapped forward and hit the rear end of the round, propelling it out the barrel, and the next round fell into place.
The gun was made of sheet metal and was painted OD green, with a "star & bars" decal on the side.
This was in the late 50's. I'd love to find even a picture of it, or anyone else who ever saw or had one of these.
I never had toy guns. I started out somewhere around age 8 or so with a Daisy lever-cocking BB gun.
It was a used hand-me-down from my cousins and I'm sure I probably put at least a thosand BBs down its tube.
Mein Gott. I got one of the "Johnny Seven OMG" guns for Christmas when I was 8 years old. It's still one of our family jokes that an old bat who lived down the block came out of her house and asked me if it was real, and being unsatisfied with my answer, followed me home in order to berate my mother for letting me run around "scaring people" (in Culver City, CA in 1963!) My mother, a diplomat to her fingertips, merely enquired solicitously after her mental health: "Dear, are you sure that it's okay with your doctor for you to be out of your house, running around loose?"
Of course, after I lost all of the grenades, rockets, and rifle ammo, the only thing left for me to do was disassemble it. It's a shame my parents had such a destructive little brat.
My dad once brought home a box that had fallen off a delivery truck (seriously). My dad picked up the box in his car but was unable to catch the delivery van, so he brought the box home. It contained a dozen of camo-painted submachine guns (not based on any real gun, AFAIK). But they still had the lever to pull back to charge the spring, and they went "rat-a-tat-a-tat" just like the Mattels. I remember calling all of the kids in neighborhood to a backyard muster, then issuing them their very own SMG! My dad was really popular with the other kids then, although not with their parent when they found who had given out those noisy things.
In around 4th or 5th grade a lot of us guys used to take plastic squirt guns to school. The idea was to squirt another guy in the crotch just before we had to go into school to make it look like he had peed his pants. Water balloons were also used in the same fashion. Still remember one guy who busted his own water balloon over his own crotch and had to run home to change his pants.
We also took squirt guns to junior high (7th grade) (no "middle school" for us!). Our shop teacher got frustrated with water getting squirted around the tools and such, so had said that squirt guns could only be used in shop class if they passed the "safety test." To demonstrate the safety test, he took a couple of squirt guns from students, then utterly crushed them in a large vise. Needless to say, the rest of us kept our squirters hidden is his class!
And Dutchman--I LOVE your using the table saw mechanism with a full-sized 57mm AT gun! Outstanding!
Rusty W
My first toy gun was a Winchester .22 semi with a tubular magazine. Wait, maybe that wasn't a toy.
Had a great many of those. wish I had em now. My how conditioned are the sheeple these days to be scared of how we turn out if we have toy guns. I also slept in a bedroom full of real ones without locks or safes.
When both my son and daughter were toddlers, they built, without prompting from me, 'guns' out of Duplos.
And they learned how to handle the real thing too -s-.
Did anybody else catch the weapon the burglar had in the Tommy gun ad was a Walther P-38? P-38 vs. a snubbie? the burglar had the better deal.
The best "toy" rifle was the one my cousin played with. The rifle was taller than my cousin (and probably the previous owner), and heavy as it was made of Japanese steel and wood. It had a chrysanthemum on top of the receiver and the firing pin was removed. My uncle did not let my cousin play with the bayonet, and definitely did not let him be anywhere near the ammunition.
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