Trawling the archive for more rayguns and water pistols, it quickly became apparent that Lone Star would tick both boxes for us! Isn't that nice of them, now the gloves are off, and we need to get this stuff posted!
From the 1958 catalogue comes the Dan Dare Space Gun, which, like most Lone Star cap-firing guns, would take a whole real of 'amorces' (we need em' for our forces!), and get through it in proper quick-time!
Mum would go spare "I'm not buying you any more caps, that's the last two rolls, use them sparingly, when they're gone, they're gone, that's IT", and if Dad was around he'd mutter "Use aimed shots, conserve your ammo.", neither of which entreaties would have any effect on us, as once the caps had run out, we just started "Bang! Bang!" 'ing each other, or the Collidge gang from Mattingley!
By 1963 Dan Dare was out, and generic sci-fi was in, with a quick renaming of the toy to The Space Ranger Pistol, which, even from black & white artwork looks to have been a tad more colourful?
2 comments:
Good morning Hugh and a very happy New Year!
Now,I suspect I'm not telling you anything you don't already know but the 'Dan Dare' pistol saw active service in the WASPs in green and red as a piece of 'Stingray' merchandise (didn't have it myself but vividly remember it, in a toy shop window back in the sixties. The trick jet water pistol is plastic, Woodsy had it up on Moonbase Central in a bag with a header card featuring both Thunderbird 2 & a Dalek. Mind you, there was a lot of toy reuse back then, for example, the plastic 'Fireball XL5' pistol later became the James Bond 'Thunderball' speargun (which I did have) with the addition of a longer Barrel and a stock.
As always, hope this ramble helped in some way!
It always helps Steve, and a Happy New Year to you too! May 2024 prove useful to us and awful to our enemies!
H
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