Posted on 12/23/2014 6:11:20 AM PST by rellimpank
Two cops rush to the scene. “This sounds like a gun battle — over there!” one calls to his partner.
They see the suspects: two little boys, wielding rifles.
The police officers do not shoot.
Rather, they examine the boys’ weapons and break into big smiles: “Hey, is it real?” one officer asks.
“Looks like real,” his partner marvels.
“And it sounds like real,” the first officer confirms.
“Right — every shot!” says the announcer, because this is on television.
It’s an ad, from 1967, for the Sound-O-Power M-16 military rifle, a big hit for Marx Toys at Christmas that year, $5.99, batteries not included.
A Marx Sound-O-Power will run you about $225 now, if you can find one on the collectors’ market. Marx, once a titan of the American toy industry, is long dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You mean like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14kc_uiM7jY
This is what we played with as kids.
No schools got shot up back then... ever.
Man, the comments-
Some people are such giant wusses it’s not even funny.
Waah!: the irritating legacy of hyperventilating liberals.
CC
I want one!
—great commercial—
Marx made some cool stuff. Many hours of my young childhood spent on the Krazy Kar.
Missing Kenner, A.C.Gilbert (erector sets), Aurora and Eldon(slot car sets), Revell (models), Ideal (Battling Tops, Ker-Plunk), Remco (Rush’s Radio Broadcast Station, my own rocket blast-off set with real control tower), (independent) Kenner (Spirograph) and Parker Brothers (great board games, now owned by Hasbro).
Now it is all Hasbro and Mattel, with Milton Bradley barely around. One good thing are the vintage upscale sets. I have gotten a proper Stratego set for my six-year old son, and we spend hours at it. Just like the real set, only with a wooden box and a twice folding board for easy storage. WELL, worth the money. We also got the original, Art Linkletter approved pre-PC Life. Classic Risk is easily available on eBay (Wooden armies... the ONLY way to go). Pre-PC Monopoly Is also available in a numer of editions, some over-priced.
And neither did us kids.
I think this article perfectly demonstrates what's wrong in our society today.
Yeah, these came out at about the same time that troops in Viet Nam were being transitioned away from the M14, to be replaced by the M16. Even though it wasn't made by Mattel, the grunts started referring to the plastic-looking M16 as a "Matty Mattel".
We don’t have television, but do watch YouTube. I try to expose my kids only for commercials for products that no longer exist (so we cannot be badgered into buying them!). This is my six year old’s favorite: (toy gun)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMqd5EQXD-g
Oddly, he also likes a Mr. Clean commercial where the mousy librarian type takes off her scarf and glasses and assembles a Mr. Clean ray gun and takes care of the kitchen. (Yes, Mr. Clean still exists, but Sivana Jr. doesn’t really want the product, he wants the non-existent cleaning self-assembled ray gun).
I miss the days when commercials told a story or made a straight pitch rather than simply bombard the viewer with images.
Got my son an AFX race set for Christmas. Now they have power pcks with 3 settings so they won;t go too fast. Expensive but nice.
As a kid, playing ‘Army’ was a real blast. Imagine fifty or sixty kids divided into two teams rampaging through the neighborhood and our Mothers tracking us by the sounds we made and sharing coffee and snacks with the neighbors and saying ‘Boys will be boys’.
I wish we could go back to that simpler time. And work to prevent the destruction the nimrods and progressives have foisted on the American people.
Did you get the one with Magna-Traction?
My older brother had the older Aurora (the AFX were definitely better). I stupidly got gulled by the commercials for Johnny Lightning (Ideal) and Class-A Racing (Topper).
My 9 year old is getting a realistic AK-47 and bolt action rifle from Santa. That AK looks like it is straight from Moscow with an orange tip
“Marx made some cool stuff.”
You can say that again! When I was a kid, I had a Marx electric model train set. It came in a big box, and cost twenty dollars new. I think it was a Christmas gift from long ago. Wish I still had it!
My neighborhood was open carry, and coon skin caps. We would randomly shoot at who ever was within sight, and often, they would pretend to be shot, then walk on to wherever they were going. I remember hiding outside behind the firewood with a friend, and plotting to heist Monopoly money from the Grandparents garage, we were armed to the teeth, and got away with a bundle of cash before lunch.
We were all free range kids, randomly collecting together at each others houses and thinking up new sorts of trouble. The neighborhoods, back then, were virtually crime free.
Oh heck yeah!...My best possession was my machine gun like Vic Morrow carried in Combat! My bro had a Springfield rifle and we had pistols, albeit with western steers on them...couple of plastic grenades. And caps...rolls and rolls of caps.
We played for hours days on end. Got real good at crawling on the ground cradling my weapon...sneaking up on that suspicious neighbor woman pretending to hang wash but was really signalling the Nazi base. Wily woman...
NO kids do this anymore. They miss out on a lot of growing up.
I can’t wait for my 5 year old son to open it up on Christmas. I’ll probably have as much fun playing with it as he will. Ebay has a lot of vintage race sets for sale. It’s fun just to look at them like we did when we were kids and had no money.
Looked for toy assault rifles for the grand kids at Walmart for Christmas presents.Red tipped ya know.They only had pseudo weapons made in total day glow colors.Finally found what I wanted at Big Lots and a lot cheaper.
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