On an earlier post about the Marx Rocket and Gantry, there were some interesting comments which reminded me of a couple of toys I had as a kid. One memorable one, which Andy B described was a Airplane Catapult Gun. This was a regular favourite of mine and something that usually only got a short shelf life as I always ended up losing the planes! Naturally, I haven't one to show now, but i made a quick sketch from memory:
The gun usually came in a header carded plastic bag and was made of silver grey plastic with two planes that had cardboard wings fitted into a soft plastic body. The handle always had a pair of gas cannisters molded into it and the barrel had various dials and meters along its length. It was always great fun to buy one of these at the seaside and shoot the planes down the beach!
A similar, but simpler toy was the Jesko Gun. Basically a handle shaped like a pistol with an elastic band fitted on it, the gun came with two planes and four saucers to launch around the place. Until recently I still had one of the planes and one of the saucers. The planes were red and yellow with a hollow body and upturned flaps on their delta wings. The surviving saucer as you can see has adjustable flaps and a plane embossed in the centre. These came in orange and lime green.
Finally another favourite of mine was the UFO gun. A plastic pistol shaped like a standard automatic with a vertical cylinder magazine built into it, you could load it up with penny sized plastic discs and blast a succession of little UFOs at your target! Again, this has long gone, but heres a Wotan impression of the saucer!
3 comments:
The one thing that surprises me ... well, I've seen some of your builds using various odds and ends ... I am surprised you never made planes to replace those you lost.
Or did you?
Yes, I recognise that plane-firing gun!
I also had a Dan Dare gun by Merit that fired spinning discs (often seen on the net), which was still being made in the mid 1960s.
Hats off to you Wotan. I remember having that disc firing gun. Those brightly coloured discs were easy to lose track of. Especially if one were foolish enough to have a gun battle in the middle of a grassy field.
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