Can you imagine them producing anything like this today?  Interestingly enough, my neighbor worked for this very toy company, and they made all manner of politically incorrect toys, which we got to play with. One, which I got to take home with me, was an automatic firing water pistol in the shape of an IMI Uzi. It took batteries, because the stream was propelled by motorized action. But it would fire as long as you held the trigger down, or until the (detachable) magazine ran dry. That was back before parents were advised not to let their kids play with realistic looking guns, lest the police shoot them mistaking them for some crazed eight year old mass shooter. You could even turn it into a flamethrower by putting various flammable liquids in the magazine, and holding an ignition source on the stream as it came out. Not that I would ever do such a thing, mind you.
In terms of water guns, the super soakers the kids have today are probably a hell of a lot better than anything I ever had, but I probably would have burned my neighborhood down if I had had access to one.
I played with lawn darts
And I ran with sticks in hand
I still have both eyes
I think that Uzi is the exact one used by the protagonists in the movie “Airheads”.
When I was a young child my brothers had black plastic Tommy guns that made sound rat tat tat. They would be in the rear cargo area of the station wagon (no seat belts ah freedom) and would shoot the traffic behind the car with the rear glass down. They were fairly realistic toys. Everyone just smiled. That was the early 1960’s. In high school this is 1970’s time of the 1968 revolution, Guys would bring in rifles to show off, usually antiques and the office would just ask that any firing pin was removed. I was skeet shooting and always had spare shells in my pockets and would split them with my buck knife and fire off the powder on the desk when bored. Usually in Geometry.
No big deal. In college we flew down and brought our shotguns and had them in the dorms so we could go shooting. This period also when airplane hijacking were occurring and security concerns were starting. All we had to do was ask the pilot to store the guns in the pilot compartment. No problem.
The paranoia and gun control started in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. Less shooters and hunters and normal folk would say why have guns, a handgun is meant for killing and they did not want to kill.
Columbine was a watershed for gun control. Stupid young killers who decided to kill for their own idiotic fantasies. The long coat deadeye killer fantasy and the killers were smart enough to accomplish their goal. Laws proliferated and school zones and the whole thing. I had a son in a private school and if we had been vocal about gun rights we would have been looked at funny. But by 6th grade and BSA we could get them to BSA rifle and shotgun shooting badges. By high school my son was in Catholic school and he would openly espouse his guns rights ideas. Virginia Tech was interesting. One young lady said that only police should have guns and he just blew up. The whole class knew his opinions and did not want to try and defend the young lady’s foolish opinion. Surprisingly Catholic schools were vastly more tolerant than public schools.
I honestly believe that my son outspoken opinion did manage to make a lot of his peers think about gun control and how stupid it is. The place to make changes is get the kids and educate them and get them shooting. I probably through BSA and my son got 50 or 80 kids into shooting sports and against gun control.
Wow, “The Assassination Game”. That brings back some geeky memories! :D
Neat blog you pointed towards, there, too. I fell into the archives for a good thirty minutes, and there’s plenty more where that came from, it looks like.
Hey,
I had that Uzi as well. That thing was bad ass! My and my buds in the neighborhood used to soak girls with it when they were doing jump rope. That thing rawked!
I had the Uzi as well, took 4 double AAs in the back. The magazine held the water but you had to feed the straw into the magazine before you could properly load it.
I also had a 1911 that had a hose that ran down to what looked like an equipment bag. The bag held the water, batteries and the pump as well as had a little holster for the gun.
I didn’t have anything that modern when I was a kid. My toy gun was a small M1903 Springfield-looking model with a wooden stock, metal barrel, working bolt (and a little yellow-painted wooden bullet permanently glued inside it). All it did was click when you pulled the trigger.
I don’t know if it was mass-produced or was handmade, but it was way cooler than any of the toy guns my friends had. Not sure what happened to it after I lost interest in childhood things, either. We mostly played WWII games back then (with other gear we bought at army surplus stores).
The kid up the street had one of those. Very cool.
Now that I have a niece who had her first birthday last month, I have been spending more time checking out what the toy market has to offer these days. While the realistic-looking toy guns of yesteryear seem to be noticeably absent from the retail marketplace, realistic-looking toy ninja assassin swords and other types of toy weaponry are just fine, apparently.
Allen – You can still get those toy M1903s here
I grew up with those Larami/Entertech squirt guns and went through a LOT of AAs. Here’s the original TV commercial.
Wasn’t an uzi, but I had a similarly-designed motorized water-gun. Age has rubbed away enough of the memories to the point where I can remember it was motorized and loaded via the magazine well.
Of course, it was the bottle-rocket fights (in suburban fairfax subdevelopments yet)….
I’m still trying to figure out how I managed the bicycle, the 3 ft PVC tube, the rockets, and the lighter…
I had a water powered rocket when I was a kid. It was red, and made of plastic. You put it on a pump, and pumped the rocket up with air. When you hit the release, the water would come out, and the thing would go about 30 or so feet up in the air. At least that was the proper way to use it. The improper way to use it was to aim it at your sister and hit the release.
Apparently those thing hurt when they beam you in the head. Who knew? Either way, I was disarmed of rocket propelled toys after that incident.
The bottle rockets were decidely Unauthorized…
Also, do you remeber being able to buy gunpowder snaps out of the ice cream truck? A twist of paper with a couple of grains of black powder in them. Fun times
Lawn darts, gun powder snaps… Ah. THAT’S a good childhood! I had a motorized squirt gun like Sebastian, but it looked like the Tec-9 he linked to. 4 AA batteries in the grip, the magazine held the water, and it worked until I broke the straw that sucked up the water…
Glad to know water rockets are still around. I’m gonna go buy a bunch of them and balsa wood airplanes while we still can…
My brother had that larami KG9 yellow bullet gun and my entire family bought other yellow bullet guns to fight in the house. They were so much fun and actually had a decent amount of velocity.
Newer toys just can’t compete. Nerf is a joke as most of the time, it can’t get more than 10 feet. Pathetic
You can still buy the water “powered” rockets from places like edmund scientifics.
http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3110400
Enjoy!
I had an Uzi- looking watergun, but it was molded plastic, and operated by pulling the handguard forward, then back (sort of like a pump shotgun) whereupon a surprising stream of water would come shooting out. This was just before, or maybe in the early days, of super-soakers. and yeah, it looked realistic as hell.
My big childhood favorite, though, was a spring-loaded blue plastic pistol called a Zebra gun, which shot little yellow balls exactly like the airsoft guns of today (this was early-to-mid-seventies). It looked just like a Whitney Wolverine, which at the time I didn’t even know existed…I just thought it was a sort of fantasy-looking ray-gun look. Imagine my shock/ nostalgia/ overpowering lust the first time I saw a REAL Whitney!!!
“realistic-looking toy ninja assassin swords and other types of toy weaponry are just fine, apparently.”
That is because there are very few drive-by bayonettings or knifings that make the evening news. If guns are ever collected in the manner of the UK that will change. In the meantime children need pretend weapons to relieve their aggressions through play, and the swords are seen as harmless by the deluded parents.
As to the slightly off topic topic of lack of guns engendering a lack of hostility, I recall my cousin’s children being fascinated by Power Rangers and regularly kicking my Aunt (their grandmother). While that was 10-15 years ago, I haven’t heard they’re on drugs or in prison or impregnating multiple underage females, so I guess they turned out ok.