I had several of these when I was a kid ... back when "guns" were cool and a cool game to play. Liberals cringe at the idea but my friends and I used to run around pretending to be gung-ho soldiers, using plastic toy guns to "shoot" each other and we'd die screaming, laying on the grassy lawn, under a blue Summer sky with all of that UV radiation just cooking our DNA. When we got hot, we'd go drink out of outside water faucets or garden hoses and you know what ... we grew up normal. Not one of my friends who ever spent the afternoon playing "guns" has ever shot another human being for any reason but especially spite.
Liberalism. It's a neural disease, it really is, akin to severe mental retardation.
Anyway I digress ...
Here she is ... the Marx Toys M-240 Machine Pistol based on a design that never existed but would have been hellacool if it ever had. Look at that oversized magazine with integral handgrip. Feast your eyes on that elongated barrel with integral flash suppressor, that undersized grip, oversized trigger guard (which made it easy on cold Winter days to play "guns" because your gloved finger could get into that trigger guard) and the fake 1x power see-through optical scope on top. The M-240 Machine Pistol was sold under many incarnations but mine usually came packaged in a simple cardboard box ... I want to say that the tag / logo was "Johnny Combat" but I can't be sure about something that was over 40 years ago for me, personally.
Pulling the trigger of the M-240 activated a simple sound system which made a sound like a stuttering horny yak that had fallen down a well. I can't say it was what a real machine pistol would sound like but it did make a fairly decent "rat-a-tat-tat" sound and on cold Winter afternoons, pulling on that trigger was nothing short of glorious because you didn't have to scream out machinegun like sounds with your own lungs and that kept you warmer longer ... and your lungs from burning from the cold Winter air.
The main problem with the Marx M-240 Machine Pistol was that the area where the barrel attaches to the main body was prone to weakness, cracking and breaking. If you took a pretty realistic death roll, you had better protect your M-240 Machine Pistol from hitting the ground too hard or ... crack ... you suddenly had a snub-nosed machine pistol and back in those days we didn't have stuff like epoxy or Superglue so it was back to the Quartermaster (parents) who disposed of the damaged / destroyed M-240 Machine Pistol (in the garbage) and went to the local Woolco, Kmart, Roses or Zaires to purchase / assign you a new one from the ordinance locker (their wallet or purse). These things retailed (way back then) for about $3 but you have to realize that $3 in 1973 was about $10 to $15 today so while they were cheap they were not cheap and the Quartermaster (parents) would not be pleased if you repeatedly twatted up your issued weapon of choice.
It was years, nay, decades before I remembered the cherished Marx Toys M-240 Machine Pistol and about ten years ago I lucked up on one on Ebay and bought it pretty cheap (like $20). It works wonderfully and is almost brand new. Right now it is in storage but I have a dream of turning one section of one wall in my study / man cave into an arsenal displaying all of the cherished (toy) firearms of my youth ... the M-240 Machine Pistol, a plastic "rapid fire" M-16, the Marx M-16 with pull back bolt and reciprocating red tip, the Marx submachinegun with same reciprocating tip, and a host of others. I'm getting there, slowly but surely and each new purchase is an adventure in and of itself.
To the kids growing up today who are being socially programmed to hate guns and to think of guns as evil objects all I can say is that my childhood was better than yours ... it was so much better than yours because I didn't spend my childhood getting indoctrinated on how to be a whiny, thin-skinned sissy who complained about getting grass stains on their clothes when they played or worried about getting hit by the dodge ball when it came my turn to be the target.
That's one of the problems with this once great country ... we don't educate our children any more, we indoctrinate them in pre-planned social behavior. We teach them that wrong is right and right is wrong. We breed out of them any kind of aggressiveness and assertiveness and in the name of being gentle and fair we've raised entire generations of useless human beings who can't fend for their selves and can't think for their selves.
Pity that.
