Lack of familiarity and respect for the potential destructive power of firearms due to “molly coddled”(for lack of a better term) kids.
I don’t find it odd at all that child gun violence had a rise in direct opposition to their responsible exposure to firearms.
Looks freakin’ awesome. Would have loved it as a kid, but in hindsight maybe having something that cool hinders imagination. I can’t honestly say that I had less fun with a garden sprayer gun and various other weapon shaped household implements.
Those days definitely glamorized combat and were certainly more casual about flying objects. But I’m not sure ‘barbaric’ is the right descriptive for this one. Johnny Seven OMA probably did less physical damage than other popular toys. For true barbarity I give you “Lawn Darts.”
I bet that gun was all metal construction, too. And I bet it became super-heated as it fired cap after cap.
And another thing, isn’t the overall murder rate down since back then? Our 2011 murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000, and firearms were used in 68% of those murders. So that puts the firearm murder rate at 3.2 per 100,000. In 1970, the murder rate was 7.9 per 100,000. For firearm crime to increase since then, firearms would have to have been used in less than 40% of all 1970 murders. I couldn’t find data earlier than 1970.
My point being that toy guns like this were surprisingly ineffective training tools.
The strange this is that when kids were playing with this stuff that WW2 was only 20 years in the past, and everyone treated it like ancient history. Today, we are 40 years after the fall of Saigon, but right wingers act like Vietnam happened yesterday.
Yo! I’m the one man army and it’s ON
I never been tooken out, I keep emcees lookin’ out
It looks like there is an Ebay seller who specializes in these. It also looks like you can often get them for under $200, although the really nice ones can sell over $400.
Today people have real guns that are way over-accessorized much like this toy gun. The “mall ninja” is the stereotypical fat fuck who thinks accessories can substitute for basic marksmanship skills.
Fuck all the hating, that toy looks awesome.
My brother and I each got one for Christmas in the 60’s. We loved them. Wore them out. They were plastic. Had BB guns. Fired 22’s. Went in the Army in 72 and never fired a weapon in anger or defense.
My brother got one of these a couple of years before I was born. There wasn’t much left of it by the time I was old enough to appreciate it and I never saw all of the parts together. I remember it being made out of plastic and seeming like it was some kind of Wonder Weapon from a lost civilization, the kind of thing that you’d come across in Gamma World session.
I just barely remember this advert. It must have run for a few years because '64 would have been way early for me to recall.
Man, I haven’t heard of or thought of Topper Toys for decades. There were so many toy companies back then. Sheaffer, Topper, Transogram, Marx. All defunct or bought out.
Plastic! I never saw an intact, working one, but a neighbor or relative or some kid of a family we visited had the sad remnants of one.
Wait wait wait… are you saying that gun violence is caused by not enough guns, and too much kindness to children?
A world with a horrifying Hollywood Walk of Fame.
A more elegant solution than Moe’s
Idea. What about a crossbow that shoots machine guns?
From what I understand, the two best old school “holy shit, thats a lot of stuff” toy guns was the Johnny Seven and the Man from Uncle.
Which reminds me of the early Gen 1 Megatron.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/transformers/images/d/d7/G1Megatron_toy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070126041644
You remind me that I had a fleet of spaceships that I loved so much. Different models all equally spacey.
They also doubled as sprinklers when needed.
