You don't want to run out of caps in the middle of a gunfight.
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 ...
One of the best Christmas presents I received back in 57’ was a Mattel cap firing Grease Gun and a whole carton of roll caps. Thing was a wind up model that ate caps at an awesome rate. Wish I still had it.
One of the best Christmas presents I received back in 57’ was a Mattel cap firing Grease Gun and a whole carton of roll caps. Thing was a wind up model that ate caps at an awesome rate. Wish I still had it.
I remember playing with cap guns. We would play cops and robbers for hours on end. Would take a box of caps and drop a big rock on them, just to hear the BANG! Two police officers from the 61st precinct in Brooklyn showed us that. Said of we were going to bomb the crooks, we should do that.
They also came around right before the 4th and showed us how to properly light fireworks without blowing ourselves up. Of course they reminded us that fireworks were illegal and told us if we planned on going to Ms. Manaccino’s house to buy them, it was cheaper to buy the gross of “jap” rockets and mat of firecrackers instead of single packs.
Funny, they also told us to tell our parents they said hi and to fix a couple of extra burgers for them on the 4th. They played in our father/son baseball games, deank beer with our parents and every now and then gave someone a ride home with a warning. No where did the word “pig” come into the conversation.
If a kid did go wrong because of drugs or getting into a gang, it was nipped in the bud. A couple of nights at Spofford usually solved the problem. More than once the local pot dealer vanished for weeks at a time, the last time coming around with a broken leg and bruises all over, only to tell the locals he was out of business.
I know this is off topic, but having a cap gun brought back memories of growing up in Brooklyn. It also brought back memories of the two officers who walked our neighborhood and how they were respected and revered by us kids.
Check out the Mattel Tommyburst too!
Here’s to Hopalong Cassidy.
My old man and uncles were WWII combat vets. I grew up around firearms, from a young age knew what they were, and how to handle them.
Remove the curiosity, replace it with knowledge and experience, and you remove the danger.
Did the same with my kids; my son was shooting .22 by the time he was five; daughter at 8. They’re expert shots now, in their 20s.
My neighborhood was Philly rowhomes; our “battlefields” were alleys, driveways, and the local high school grounds.
It’s a different world now. Cops are being shot at by “teens” (euphemism for non-White thugs)
Cops no longer assume that the citizen has good intentions. The presumption of innocence is gone.
Always wanted to travel that way, I worked with several people from Philly, I’m sure its just a coincidence, but they were all plucky, and a lot of fun, I sort of felt like a kid brother around them, including the young lady who stole my heart back in the day. Thanks, for the memory prompt, almost forgot about her, what a knockout.
I bought an airsoft Beretta Px4 Storm to use as a practice pistol since it is practically identical to my carry weapon. The weight is a little off, but not by as much as you’d think, as the barrel is actually metal. It’s freaking awesome for building muscle memory of holster draws and the like. It’s accurate enough for indoor and backyard practice. Ammo is a lot cheaper too.
We were always crounging for pop bottles for deposit refunds so we could by more packages of Army men and BBs. We would set them on the dirt piles across from each other and take turns shooting each others army. It was a blast.
I remember my first BB gun for Christmas in 1966 and my set up a target range in the living room. Hung a couple of the old heavy wool army blankets over some chairs and we starting plinking. The BBs just ended it in the folds of the blankets.
Philly isn’t what it used to be, my friend...
Ah the smell of caps in the after noon fun times.
I bet you can’t buy rolls of caps anymore..............
Holy gun violence, Batman! I just checked Ebay to see what my old double-holster Fanner Fifty setup would bring these days and saw prices at $150! Heck, you could get a holster and a pair of real guns for that back then!
Our Trail Life USA troop did just that last week. About 15 boys assembled at a farm with a myriad of airsoft guns and played warrior games for about 5 hours...in the cold.
—I’m a little too old to have had the really realistic capguns—don’t think I saw any of those til about the mid-fifties—
You don't want to run out of caps in the middle of a gunfight.
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