Posted on 12/25/2008 8:59:35 AM PST by Soliton
This Mattel toy set would peobably get you arrested today.
I want one.
The other was a 155 howitzer that you compressed the ball onto a shell, loaded the shell into the breech and pulled a lanyard. the ball would fly about 50 yards. I wound up in trouble the first time I shot it, Christmas morning, because I didn't know how far the ball would go. I think I broke 4 or 5 things with the first, and last, shot.
I did get that one back a few days later
I had a water fueled rocket that I lit off in the house on Christmas day.
Wooops....
I felt like Joe Biden.....
“Oh... Hey!.....what was I thinking?....”
I still remember playing in the woods, the boys all running through the woods with Davy Crocket coon skin caps on. Forts and Red Riders the pride and glory of the boys.
Watch out Indians and squirrels!
.....I can also still smell the acrid but exciting gunpowder .....
Beside me I have three red and one blue cap balls. They are about 1” in diameter and very hard. They have tiny caps embedded.
When you throw one in the air and let it impact with the other as you catch it, it explodes with a good bang and the smoke and smell you noted.
I did have one of these (I wish I still had it!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9ojNddiSI&NR=1
As kids, we used to take an entire roll of caps, put it on the sidewalk and whack it with the end of a baseball bat shoved down hard vertically onto it. The blast was phenominal, like a cherry bomb. Kids will find a way....
I remember this one. IIRC, we all thought it was pretty awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuvqPMWv8YU&feature=related
There you go. A full roll of caps and a hammer: BOOM!
Five full rolls and a small sledge hammer: KABOOOM!
Yep, and I think he’s also the narrator.
Cool! : D
I've tried to find one in the last couple of years so I can replace it but they aren't available anymore.
I'm looking for an Armalite AR 10 & a .38 special instead. ; )
My son says there is one on sale on ebay for less than $40.00.
Wow! Does that bring back past Christmas memories! I used to have one of these when I was a kid. My oldest brother bought it for me when he was on Christmas shore leave with the Navy. My friends and I would play cops and robbers during school recess. Try that today and they will throw the book at you!
THE toy gun to have in the late 1950s was the Fanner 50. Both my brother and I had one — with holsters, of course — and we spent hours drawing on each other. Life was so much simpler, just so uncomplicated, in the 1950s (at least for us kids).
The one we had was plastic with a metal head. You put a paper cap in it and when it fell, the metal head hit first and made a disapointing “pap!” sound. The metal top hurt when it was thrown in surprise at a dirty jerry or jap (my next door neighbor twins).
Probably the most desirable toy guns are the famous Mattel cowboy guns of the late 1950s known as the Fanner 50, with its incredibly realistic Winchester Saddle gun rifle, and the subsequent “Shootin’ Shell” line of pistols, rifles, and derringers. These Mattel guns now sell from $100 and up (see below).
http://users.rcn.com/ed.ma.ultranet/toyguns.html
I had one of those. Greenie stickum caps were great. I also had the belt buckle derringer that fired the same plastic bullets. That was lots of fun!
The cops would shoot you. The .38 looks real!
That $7 was real money back then!
I had a chemistry set. Mix a little Potassium Nitrate, Powdered Charcoal and Sulfur and you get ... gunpowder!
Add some powdered Aluminum and it burns red or pink. Add some powdered Magnesium and it burns blue-white.
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