Ah the good old days of toy guns.

[D.B. Cooper]

Y'all ain't going to like hearing this, but...when I saw that "Gung Ho" commercial, the first thing I thought was "I wonder how many of those kids died in Vietnam."

 

[Mars5l]

I remember as a young kid Disney sold those musket style cap guns in Frontier Land and Pirates of the Caribbean. My folks bought me a pistol one when I was like 5. I remember seeing all the rifles, some in gold. I wanted so badly back then. Now they don't exist.

 

[357smallbore]

Remember the red rolls of caps. A couple in your cap gun and you could shoot all day.
No more. Cap gun control.

Shot the heck out of the red caps. The round and straight ones. Loved the smell after shooting them

 

[SunnySlopes]

Meanwhile, back at the department of bright ideas...
My buddy took the powder from some firecrackers and loaded it in a 22 LR. This was not black powder, it was in small pale green flakes. He had a bolt action 22, nothing special, run of the mill. After firing the stock was cracked and the magazine damaged. He wasn't. Makes one wonder how we survived childhood.

I had to make an emergency trip to my pediatrician cause I tried to empty the powder from a 22 rimfire by snipping the rim off with wire cutters. The powder ignited and put a piece of shrapnel in my finger.

I always thought I was the only stupid kid on earth. Till I read this thread. Must be the ingenuity of male youth made us do the things we did.

 

[Heir Kommt Die Sonne]

When I was a little little kid, we had those western style cap toys. We felt they were cool, but not reliable enough. This was around the 2000s so maybe they just don't make them as well anymore.
Later on, around puberty, it was Airsoft. Shaped like the real thing but clear plastic. My brother had the one that looked like a M16, I bought the 1911 one. We felt so cool with those things. I probably went aroudn the neighborhood with it much more than I should've. Once a older lady saw me and yelled, Get over here! When I arrived, she was scolding me for waving a (although it's see through plastic) pistol around, told me to shoot at the tree so she could see what kind of damage it could do. I do so and she's says "you're gonna shoot your eye out with that thing!" and told me not to play with it outside anymore. Good times.
We also had nerf guns, which were fun inside.

 

[hemiram]

I had a bunch of fun stuff when I was little, the usual Fanners, etc, but when I was about 9 or so, my dad started giving me the "broken" .22 blank guns from his store that were almost always pretty easy to fix. The revolvers were usually just too tight to function, a little filing and sandpapering parts had them going. The semiautos had all kinds of problems. Lots of them had really badly cast or machined parts that required me to carefully file on their zinc parts just enough to get them going, but not too much. If I did, they became parts guns. I went from the blank guns to the Crosman spring powered pellet/BB/dart guns, and then to the CO2 "Healthways" gun I shot myself through my hand with when I was about 15 or so. It was a tossup which hurt worse, a BB in my face, or a BB through my hand.

 

[desmobob]

Back in the mid 1960's or so, I had and all plastic toy M16 with the original charging handle design. You'd pull the charging handle back, which wound a spring, and you'd get a *brap* *brap* *brap* *brap* sound every time you pulled the trigger until the spring wound down.

ETA: Whoops! Just realized it was a toy AR-10, not a toy M16/AR-15.

I had one of those and my best pal had one that ran on batteries and could produce a whole selection of battlefield sounds.

We also went through countless rolls of red caps, plastic "full-moon" cap rings, ball bearings and marbles from our slingshots, etc. We used match heads to make bicycle spoke "cannons", match stick rockets, and all kinds of other small explosions. Ah... the good 'ol days!

 

[tws3b2]

I remember back in the early 50s (yeah, The sun had been turned on for the first time, dirt, and the wagon wheel had been invented for a few years, So don't go there.) I got a pump shotgun for Christmas. Looked somewhat realistic. You racked it like a real pump and it shot out a plastic ball that was a little larger than a golf ball. I don't remember how many it held, several. I must have been around 5 years old. I loved that thing. Out of all Christmas presents since, I remember that most often.
Cowboy and cowgirl hats, suits, vest and guns were probably some of the biggest sellers not only at Christmas but all through the year. Had to have your trusty six shooter and cowboy hat to watch the Lone Ranger and Tonto ride Silver and Scout across the tv screen every Saturday morning. Taking out the bad guys, one after the other.
Then somewhere along the years some idiotic wacko stood up and said, "bad bad bad, them things teaches kids to kill and be bad".
For me, I think thats when people began to lose all common sense. Now, Thirteen year old shoots cop just last week. And, It's not that uncommon. Teenagers carrying guns, selling dope and running in ruthless gangs is just a common thing today.
Maybe, someday, someday when people start to get a little common sense back. Maybe.

 

[GBExpat]

"Greenie Stick-M-Caps" I had forgotten all about those.

I still have a few of those "Shootin' Shells" downstairs with my shooting supplies but I doubt that I have seen my Fanner 45/50 in decades.

I also had one of the Tommie guns. It has been inop for at least a half century, but it is downstairs in my bunker with the other "guns".

 

[230RN]

...
After inheriting a real Luger about 21 years ago I came across a Luger squirt gun on E-Bay and jumped on it. Here's my pair of Lugers...View attachment 1152130..

Great story ! When you practice "dry firing" the orange water pistol, make sure all the water has been safely removed and safely stored away in another room. You don't want any accidental discharges while dry firing your water pistol.

Terry

 

[Skribs]

Even in the 90s, you weren't allowed to have toy guns in your backpack when going through airport security.

Trust me.

 

[The Bushmaster]

My favorite was my Hopalong Cassidy double rig cap pistols. Kinda wish I still had them.

 

[Choctaw]

Can't believe that nobody recognized the young actor in the 2nd video about the bazooka that shot a blast of air? A very young "Snake" Plissken.

Cheers

Must have been his pre-Disney days.

 

[Speedo66]

Here he is folks, the fastest gunslinger around, feared from Yonkers to Staten Island, The Bronx Kid.

 

[bannockburn]

22250Rem

After school we sometimes engaged in squirt gun battles; I wore out a few of those back then and also discovered the "pointability" of the German Luger design when I had several Luger squirt guns. After inheriting a real Luger about 21 years ago I came across a Luger

I remember my brother and I had squirt guns that actually looked like the real things! He had a Luger, with black colored plastic for the metal parts and brown plastic for the grips while I had the same thing with a Beretta Model 34. Those were two of the most realistic looking, full size squirt guns I have ever seen!

 

[Old Dog]

Y'all ain't going to like hearing this, but...when I saw that "Gung Ho" commercial, the first thing I thought was "I wonder how many of those kids died in Vietnam."

Why? That thought never occurred to me.

And I grew up watching the old B&W WWII movies with Dad, Combat, Rat Patrol on TV, SGT Rock and SGT Fury comics...had a first-issue G.I. Joe, M1 Carbine BB gun by age 9...played "war" with all my little buddies, all of us kitted out like 1st ID soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge. Yes, a few of the older boys in the neighborhood did go to VN, a cousin died there.

Is that line of thought in line with the liberal anti-gun faction beliefs that toy guns make children more prone to violent and war-like behavior? (Always wondered why the antis make toy guns antithetical to our society's children, yet say nothing about violent video games or motion pictures)



Bought this for the grandkid but my Seattle liberal man-bunned son-in-law refused it. Yet he's a gamer who plays some extremely violent video games.

 

[Heir Kommt Die Sonne]

or motion pictures)

Honestly I've wondered if the biggest culprit to our desensitized society is the movies. Almost half of them feature violence in a glorified manner, or in a light hearted way.

 

[SSN Vet]

My kindergarten teacher would make us toy guns by cutting an old garden hose into 6" lengths and nailing them into little blocks of wood cut from a 2x4.

Video games weren't a thing yet, so Cops & Robbers, and Cowboys & Indians were our games of choice.

 

[Speedo66]

My kindergarten teacher would make us toy guns by cutting an old garden hose into 6" lengths and nailing them into little blocks of wood cut from a 2x4.

Video games weren't a thing yet, so Cops & Robbers, and Cowboys & Indians were our games of choice.

I think just saying “gun” nowadays may be grounds for expulsion.

 

[22250Rem]

This thread reminded me of the best dart gun I ever had. It looked just like a Colt 1911 and fired suction cup darts. Shove the shaft of the dart down the bore and it compressed the firing spring, and when the trigger was pulled it launched the dart. Was able to "shoot" people who appeared on TV and it worked better if the suction cups were slightly moist ( I would just lick them), so they wouldn't bounce off the screen. Got my first taste of gun control when mom got tired of cleaning saliva off the TV screen.

 

[Old Dog]

This thread reminded me of the best dart gun I ever had. It looked just like a Colt 1911 and fired suction cup darts.

I had one of those. We also used to buy those colorful translucent 1911-style squirt guns and paint them black with model paint.

 

[forward observer]

Well, as long as we're posting pictures with our cap guns

Here I am at maybe age 3 or 3 and 1/2 with my first cap pistol and holster. Probably taken early in 1949. My dad got me my first pair of jeans with the cuffs turned up almost to my knees and some little cowboy boots. By the next Cristmas, Santa had brought me a fancy pair of Hopalong Cassidy
cap guns with a double holster rig. (by way of the big Sears Christmas wishbook where Santa worked)

That leather jacket looked more like the Fonze than a cowboy.





Cheers

 

[230RN]

Can't say as I blame them for not letting toy guns through at the airport. You could actually hijack a plane or rob a store with some of the more accurate ones.

Here's a propane (LPG)- powered Mark 4 Colt that except for the readily-paintable red muzzle is very detailed and "life-like." The 360 psi LPG gas will throw a 6mm plastic ball with enough nrg to make a substantial dent in a stainless steel magnetic parts dish as well as rack the slide. The magazine holds ten 6mm balls and the gas tank, which is easily refillable from a cigarette lighter refill bottle.

I used to fire only one shot per day downward from my second-floor apartment at an exposed rock in the irrigation ditch since the noise was about like a screen door slamming. I could tell when I hit the rock about 15(?) yards away because there would be no splash.

But a new neighbor in the apartment building started to question that noise so I quit that fun and gave the gun to one of my sons before I got ratted out.

 

[Master Blaster]

Had plenty of toy guns, but none of those specifically. I still have a Hubley "Dick" (Tracy) special around somewhere that I found in a gravel pit, half encased in concrete from the broken-up slab of our old elementary school. I can only surmise the pistol was thrown in the original foundation when it was poured and mummified there for 50 years. I carefully chipped away the remaining concrete, gave it a thorough clean/oil job and it still functions with roll caps. Original springs too!

Here,is my Dick special from 1967 it holds a roll of caps. Also a tiny cowboy gun. Both made by Hubley toy co.

 

[Simple Shooter]

I remember as a young kid Disney sold those musket style cap guns in Frontier Land and Pirates of the Caribbean. My folks bought me a pistol one when I was like 5. I remember seeing all the rifles, some in gold. I wanted so badly back then. Now they don't exist.

Great memories in a great thread. I had two of these that took up every penny I had saved to take to Disney World as a kid. Though we all had red roll cap 6 guns, I was the envy of all my friends with my pirate pistols from WDW. My how times change.