Kenner Star Wars Laser Pistol and Laser Rifle

There came a time in my childhood when two of the most awesome guns were made available by Kenner; the Star Wars (Han Solo) Laser Pistol and the Star Wars 3 Position Laser Rifle.  This gave the "good guys" a gun to use and the "bad guys" a gun to use as well.  For Christmas of 1978 I received the Star Wars 3 Position Laser Rifle while my friend three houses down got the Star Wars Laser Pistol.  After that, the hours were spent running around the neighborhood draining pairs of C and D sized batteries to our hearts' content.

The weapons were somewhat faithful reproductions of their on screen counterparts but the sounds that these toys produced were nowhere near what the sounds in the movie were.  In fact, both toy guns were activated by a two stage trigger system ... a small nipple type button in the hand grip activated something inside the gun so that when the trigger was pulled the toy gun made a noise reminiscent of either a buzzsaw at a lumber mill or a hamster being put in a blender.  We both found that even at the age of 8 years old we could make more accurate Star Wars blaster sounds using our mouths than Kenner could using electronics and back then electronics was the big thing in toys ... an electronic toy was cutting edge and these toy guns weren't the cheapest toys on the market.  They weren't the most expensive, but they weren't the cheapest either.

Han Solo's German Mauser based heavy blaster pistol. 
You unscrewed the two twist knobs on the side and inserted
two "C" sized batteries in the toy.  The batteries
had amazingly short lives, IIRC.

I think one of the things that endeared me most to the weapons of Star Wars was the fact that all of the weapons were built out of real world counterparts ... familiar counterparts ... mostly taken from World War II which fit right in with my pre-Star Wars love affair of all things World War I and World War II.  Years of being weaned on "Sgt. Rock" and "The Unknown Soldier" and "The Losers" and other combat comics and of playing with Marx "green army men" had made me more than aware of the many, many weapons used in the major wars.  As such, it was easy to see where Han Solo's blaster was made out of a early 20th century German Mauser (one of my favorite pistols of all time).  The standard Stormtrooper weapons included the standard issue blaster rifle (created from a Sterling 9mm submachinegun) and two heavy blasters created out of a German MG34 machinegun and a British Lewis machinegun.  Scopes and doo-dads were added liberally to these classic weapons but their cores, their guts, were unmistakeable which I guess made them all the more believable when they were being used because I had seen so many combat movies where the cores of those fantastic weapons had been used.

The 3 Position Laser Rifle was probably the neater (and more expensive) of the two blaster offerings but it was also the more prone to break.  Loading batteries into this toy weapon required that you twist / pop the rear loop off at the rear of the weapon, take a cover off and insert two "D" sized batteries (batteries not included).  When you pulled the secret nipple trigger below the trigger guard and then pulled the trigger the 3 Position Laser Rifle did something that the Laser Pistol did not ... it spun a yellow with black stripes "barber pole" inside the barrel ... and made a sound reminiscent of a failing starter on a AMC Pacer.

The rear loop, for whatever reason it was included, was both prone to breaking through hard play and even more prone to simply fall off and disappear.  It wasn't required for the laser rifle to work but it was something that when it went missing you felt like your toy was incomplete.

What really set the Laser Rifle apart from the Laser Pistol was the three position folding stock hence the name of the weapon being 3 Position Laser Rifle.  The stock was affixed to the weapon at two swivel points located at the back and to each side of the hand grip.  On the front, a simple clip "snapped" the folding stock in tight against the barrel.  This clip also did not survive strenuous childhood rough housing and when it broke it would leave you with a folding stock that simply had to either be deployed full or held tight against the barrel.

The three positions, seen above on the box, were folded (standard), shoulder pad down up front (guard) and fully extended (turning the rifle into a real rifle).  While we never saw any of the three positions of the stock being used in the movie that didn't stop us from taking it as canon and running with it.

 

Although my original 3 Position Laser Rifle never made it with me out of childhood I was lucky enough to find a replacement on Ebay a few years ago.  The toy did include the rare (and often lost) rear D-ring type clip but the front clip for the stock was broken.  The toy blaster did not work even with new batteries and a quick inspection of the screws used to secure the casing showed that the tiny screws were heavily rusted and corroded.  If I go into this toy to see if I can fix it, it's going to require new screws as I have doubts if the heads of the current screws may even make it through a very careful disassembly.  I also plan on using a simple pair of magnets under the barrel to "grab" the stock and secure it in the folded position.

I said that I never owned the Laser Pistol ... now I do, from the same Ebay seller and in similar condition (though this toy still had some obscure, cheap-ass "C" size batteries in it that were rusting to pieces).  Other than the non-functioning electronics and the broken stock retaining clip on the laser rifle, both toy weapons seem quite well preserved for 36 year old artifacts from my childhood.  Both are dusty as hell and will require hours of careful cleaning to be fully presentable but the plastic is still non-discolored and uncracked.  

I think I'll mount them on pegs on the wall of my study where, like my other iconic toys from the 1970's, I'm sure they'll incite conversation from those who remember these toys.  As I hold these toy weapons in my hands, I'm taken back to cold winter days where imagination ran free and so did we through the yards of our neighbors yelling and laughing and not having a care in the world other than how much fun we could have.

Rayline Zebra II Soft and Safe Pellet firing Pistol

Another cherished childhood memory ... and a regular sidearm in my untold number of games of "guns" when I was in my single digit years ... was the Rayline Zebra II soft pellet pistol.  This toy was based off of the (then) radical 1950's era .22 caliber Whitney Wolverine (but I never knew that at the time, I thought that the Zebra II was something that some secret agents somewhere carried).  

Interestingly enough, the Whitney Wolverine also was the inspiration for another toy gun I acquired on Ebay ... "The Wizard" from "The Untouchables" staring Robert Stack (of course "The Wizard" had nothing to do with the TV show other than borrowing the name to make money commercially.  ("The Wizard" was reviewed months ago in my blog and was an interesting dual purpose toy that fired both darts as well as acted like a water gun.)

But I digress ... 

The sleek lines of the Zebra II made it perfect as a laser pistol or raygun from that time in the late 1950's / early 1960's.  The Zebra II fired soft, yellow pea-sized vinyl balls at a muzzle velocity that might bruise a butterfly (if the vinyl ball had a good tailwind and if you got lucky) but to a 5 year old it was utterly bad ass.  Like the Rayline Tracer Guns, this toy used ammunition that was available both with the gun when it was first purchased and separately as well.  Unlike the Rayline Tracer Guns, firing the Zebra II outside invariably ran through ammunition quickly since the pea-sized vinyl balls were easily lost in the grass of someone's yard or the dirt of a vacant lot.

I don't know how many packs of SS (Soft - Safe) ammo that my parents bought for me but I seem to remember there being a box of the ammo in the shopping cart every time we went to Roses' or Kmart or Zaire's.  This box of 250 pellets came in five layers of 50 pellets each ... and you had to twist and / or pull each of the pellets off from their "sprue" before you could use them.  

Loading the Zebra II was through a sliding port in the top of the pistol and it fed through simple gravity.  A spring / rubber band type trigger assembly fired one pellet per pull of the trigger but IIRC, turning the Zebra II a certain way would allow a pellet to work its way from the hold to the launch ramp and fall out the barrel of the pistol.  This was detrimental to you being an effective fighting force in the game of "guns" when you went to shoot someone with your Zebra II, pulled the trigger and the gun simply made a clicking sound ... because the pellet had already fallen out somewhere behind you and had been lost in the dirt or grass.


Rayline also made a rather smurfy pump action shotgun that they called the "Jr. Sportsman "240" Automatic Rifle" (see image on the ammo box above) except that it wasn't an automatic rifle at all ... no, it was a pump shotgun much like the ones used by police officers on popular TV shows of the time (and if you didn't grow up in the 1970's, believe me, there were a lot of cop action / crime drama shows on TV back then).  The Rayline pump shotgun loaded from the top as well and could hold far more pellets than the much smaller Zebra II.  IIRC, it also had the problem of pellets falling out of the weapon at the wrong moment, especially if you ran with the weapon and jostled it around a lot like jumping over fences or hedges.  The best thing about the Rayline pump action shotgun wasn't that it carried more ammo than the Zebra II or that it had longer range but rather the sound that it made; a nice resounding "phunt" that shot a pea-sized yellow pellet towards your target, more or less (generally less of more and more of less).  

Accuracy wasn't a high point of the Rayline pump but man it sure was fun.  On rainy days, I'd line up green army men and have target practice.  On days with good weather, my friends and I would play "SWAT", reenacting our favorite scenes from the popular TV police action drama series of the time.  We all owned several plastic M16s (in sky blue and military green colors) and of course I had my Rayline pump action shotgun.  The neighborhood was never a dull place when imaginations were matched only by the amount of play guns that we could lay our 5 year old hands on.

Toys were definitely more cool when I grew up ... and Rayline provided so many good times that decades later the many good memories of my youth often revolve around some toy produced by this iconic purveyor of processed plastic.

The Zebra II came in two colors that I remember; a blue and a kind of tan / gold.  As for this particular toy pistol, I just picked this example up off of Ebay for the princely sum of about $15 including shipping and fondling.  It doesn't work, and while the trigger moves forward and back it fails to "click" so I know that this particular toy will never shoot again.

It is my goal to turn this into a ray gun for the Strategic Space Command / Leif Ericson universe that I've been penciling out.  A little bit of modeling and kitbashing and this will become one of the standard sidearms of the humans.  It's compact enough to fit nicely into a role somewhere between the classic Star Trek Phaser I and Phaser II type weapons.  The size makes it discrete, the shape makes it easier to aim and fire than the TV remote shaped Phaser I type weapons.

Mystery toy guns of my youth ...

I'm once again asking for help.  Does anyone remember a pair of toy guns from the early to mid 1970's?  The last time I saw them for sale was sometime in the mid 1970's, say 1975, and I want to say that Mattel produced them.  

They were very well built toys, on the high end in price.  

The first toy gun I remember was a pistol gripped full size carbine that fired plastic stripper caps fed single file into a removable magazine in the pistol grip.  The stock was pseudo-wood, more like dense pressed fake-wood that they used on car dashes on old Chevy Impalas.  It was a big gun, full size, adult and a childhood friend had one but the stock kept coming off (mainly because it was held on with one long screw which had become lost ...).  It looked almost Olympic in its design, it was metal and plastic and fake-wood and it weighed and cost almost as much as a decent Daisy BB gun at that time.  I've searched for years on Ebay just to see this toy again and maybe find one cheap enough to own but alas ...

The other toy gun was called "The Black Widow" and I think that Mattel made it as well.  It was a unique looking, wicked black revolver, more waspish than widow.  It had a long barrel, a metal cylinder and it took those 8 shot plastic ring caps that were easier to load than the paper caps but which were such a total step bitch to pry off once you had fired the entire bunch and the cap blasts had melted or distorted the cheap plastic.

I miss the smell of a good, lengthy cap gun fight ... the smoke, the odor wafting on the wind.  Precious childhood memories, filtered through the rays of light of a fast fading year in the cool fall.

Both toy guns were sold and packaged as being the equipment used by urban spec-ops / SWAT teams.  I'm pretty sure these guns came out the same time that Mattel painted their "Heroes In Action"  figures blue and reissued them as "SWAT".  Heroes In Action ... that's another post in the old neural queue soon to come your way.

Well, if else anyone remembers these two toy guns or you have more info on them, drop me a line.

Update - January 28, 2014 - Mystery solved ... I found the carbine in an old J.C. Penny Christmas catalog from 1976.  This item is listed as a "Crackfire Carbine" in one place and as a "Police Task Unit Carbine" under the picture.

The description (4) reads "Crackfire Carbine.  like the ones used by police task units.  Pistol grip holds full load of strip-shot caps (caps not included).  Release safety and fire - the caps eject automatically.  Black and woodgrain finished diecast metal and plastic.  34 1/2 inches long.  3.20 lbs. $9.99".

I'd be lying to you if I told you that, as a 6 year old and a first grader, way back in 1976, I didn't daydream about getting that army play uniform and military gun playset though I didn't like the camo scheme on the Tommy Gun.

Even a year later, as a 7 year old second grader, even being big for my age, this gun was hard to hold and play "guns" with.  It was heavy, too ... big, long and heavy so it wasn't a favorite.  I remember the dark colored packaging of the rifle and I want to say that my falliable childhood memory put this as being marketed as part of the Mattel "Heroes in Action" SWAT offerings.

Of special note is item number (8) - the Rango Rapid-Fire Rifle which would later be repackaged with an Ape mask as part of their Planet of the Apes offerings.  Doubt it?  See here?  Oh, those lazy toy manufacturers.  Mattel also repackaged their old Tommy Gun with an Ape mask as part of the same series though neither a lever action rifle or a Tommy gun was ever used by an Ape in the POTA series.  I'd be willing to go so far as to bet that the Western revolver offered as part of the POTA series toys was also a repackaged older toy.

And a few minutes after I found the mystery carbine I also lucked up on the Black Widow pistol ... it was offered by Mattel, part of the "Crackfire" series and listed as a SWAT offering.

Thank you, Internet, for helping me find the mystery toys of my youth though sometimes my memories are a bit fuzzy ... like the fact that I remembered this revolver had a larger frame / longer barrel but it seems remarkably like a lot of other similar cap revolvers of the time.  Strange ...

Marx Toys - M240 Machine Pistol

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.

Knicker Bocker guns

Recently while looking on Ebay I came across an auction for three old Knicker Bocker brand toy guns.  The price was right, at just ten bux plus shipping and fondling and so I picked them up as the only bidder.  The problem is that all three are broken in some form or the other ... the six shooter at top is missing its trigger guard, the big "auto-mag" on the bottom is missing part of the back side of the barrel (other side not shown, exposing the rusty spring that used to propel what looks like a sizable suction cup tipped dart) and the middle pistol is missing its trigger ... among other things.

I purchased this lot for the middle pistol because something about it stirred a childhood memory ... these guns are all from the late '60's so they were probably well played with by the time I was old enough to enjoy them in the early '70's and I swear that when I lived in Jackson, MS from late '74 till the late part of '76 that one of my friends had the middle pistol and that I played with it at some time or the other during one of our many neighborhood games of "guns".  

What makes the middle pistol so unique is that it is a combination toy ... it is both a spring loaded dart pistol and a water gun (hence the dual trigger array).  The water stream is pumped out from the front top sight of the pistol while the dart would have loaded into the open barrel (even now I can still remember the sound of that dart spring being compressed ...).



The middle pistol is damaged in many ways ... it came with no dart, it has two holes straight through it (near the medallion) which makes me think that it once was shot with a BB gun at close range and some of the filigree etching on the barrel is partially melted and smeared meaning this toy got near a source of heat at one point in its long career.

And just how long has this toy gun been around?  Well, looking at the various stamps on the pistol I find the following information:

KNICKERBOCKER

NO. HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.

PAT.NOS. 2,678,753, 2,724,528

OTHER PATS PEND

On the left hand side of the pistol is a long gold "plaque" which reads "THE UNTOUCHABLES".

On both sides of the handgrips are a pair of medallions with some kind of Colonial or Quaker type town crier holding a banner in front of him with chains dangling on each end.

On the lower part of the left front of the pistol is perhaps the real mystery ... there is stamped script here which reads:

LANGFORD PRODS. INC 1960

DESILU PRODS. INC.

Now, if you are not familiar with DESILU Productions then let me just say that it was a company owned by the husband and wife team of ... Desi Arnaz and Lucile Ball (of the "I Love Lucy" show fame).  If anyone ever had one of these or has any information on this toy, let me know as I'm curious about its origins, "The Untouchables" name plate and this toy's relation to the DESILU Productions studio.

1960?!?!

This pistol could be nine years older than I am!  It's when I hold an old toy like this in my hands and think about it that I wonder ... was this a birthday present or a Christmas present for some little boy?  Was it cherished?  Was it desired?  Did it give hours of play to some child in a town or neighborhood far, far away?  Each toy has its own set of stories and that's what makes toys, especially old toys, used toys, special.  This toy gun could very well be 52 years old ... and it's still neat as hell to look at and hold and think about.

As for why I purchased this lot of broken guns, it was the middle gun, the mystery gun, which really caught my eye.  The waspish shape to it was pleasing to the eye and since I was on my Leif Ericson cerebral safari (see previous post), and since I had decided to mock up some 1:1 scale examples of sidearms for that postulated universe, seeing this pistol made it a natural for a sidearm in the LE fiction that I had cobbled up.

So ... please welcome the latest addition to the kitbashing section of the work bench: the Federation WASP sidearm where WASP stands for Wide Application Service Phaser.  The name matches the design and with a little sanding, a little filing, a little filling, some greebles and some paint the WASP is going to be the standard issue service sidearm for the Federation crews in the Leif Ericson universe.

Stay tuned, this project will be coming to "Grey Stuff" soon.

The Cosmic Liquidator

The Cosmic Liquidator ... late '70's ... $4.99 at Kmart in Hattiesburg, MS. The first pressurized water gun on the market, a space-type pistol fed by a clear tube connecting it to the "power pack" you wore on your belt. The tiny switch at the front of the pistol set it for either stream or pulse fire and you charged the water gun by pumping air into the liquid tank (much like a garden sprayer). I say "liquid tank" because one afternoon Alan Speed and I decided to fill the "liquid" tank with gasoline from his dad's gas can in the garage.

I pumped the tank up until it was literally bulging, we marched across the street to a vacant lot, he held the Bic lighter at a safe distance and I pulled the trigger sending a stream of high pressure gasoline from the nozzle of the Cosmic Liquidator through the lighter's flame and ...

... and it was nothing short of glorious ... 

It was everything that we had hoped and thought it would be and for a few short minutes two nine year old boys had a working flamethrower which devastated large ant hills and anything else we spewed that flaming stream of gasoline on. We even tried to write our names in burning liquid on the back side of a neighbor's fence.

... and then we noticed that in our gleeful abandon we had been maybe a bit ambitious in our pyromania and there was more fire than we could stamp out, believe me, we tried. There was more foot stomping than "River Dance - The Musical" and more cussing than a Richard Pryor concert. Knowing that we had only one chance to avoid what could only be trouble of Old Testament proportions, we ran back across the street, grabbed about a hundred feet of coiled up garden hose, turned it all the way on and spent the next ten minutes doing our best to keep a vacant lot in Hattiesburg, MS (and probably the neighbor's fence and several houses around that lot) from burning to the ground.

We were successful in our fire fighting efforts and we learned a valuable lesson that day ... gasoline and plastic are not friends. Yes, our brief adventure with the Cosmic Liquidator using gasoline as a projected medium of entertainment had melted the air pump and most of the internals of the gun rendering it useless ... but while it had worked and before things had gotten out of hand it had been nothing short of awesome to hold a pistol like that in your hand and be able to stream liquid fire out to ten or twelve feet.

If you want to read all the glorious details, step on over to "Tales from the Driver's Seat".

Today, all these years later, I'm amazed that I ever survived my childhood but what memories I have and I wouldn't trade them for anything.