the old cap bomb, who never had one of those, great toy that was.also links to equipment and publications WW2 HOMEFRONT TOYS
Back in the fifties when I was just a kid, I got a neat "set" that was sold by Mattel. It included a "Tommy" gun that fired ten round bursts when you pulled the cocking handle back, or could fire in single shots when you lifted the rear sight up. It was sold in both the Detective and the Army Sgt. sets. With the Army Sgt. set I got a plastic GI helmet (with sgt. stripes on front), the M1A1 submachine gun, and two grenades for throwing. The grenades were weighted to always land on their fining pin and could be loaded with paper caps, as could the M1A1. The Tommy gun used those roll type, and the grenades used single caps. Here is a link to the "Tommy gun" being fired from the Detective set in the right hand column, from an ad from Mattel. Goto: Do you remember the toys you played with as a child from The People History Site I was hot stuff with my helmet, tommy gun, and grenades when we played "GI v Axis"!
the old view master,my uncle brought that for me way back in the 50s,while he was still in the navy,from while he was in singapore at the time, the tommygun video? is that what you had? and a lyman site on it,wow! nice toy clint...
Yupper, that was my "tommygun". My little brothers were 11 and 12 years younger than I was so when they got to be about five or six (in that range), they had completely "used up" my old tommygun so I bought them each a Topper set called Johnny Eagle that had a magazin fed M-14 and a .45 ACP in it. Of course they immediately lost the two piece bullets for both the pistols and the rifles, but they were very realistic. When they got even a bit older I bought them a matched set of Crosman BB guns in their M1 .30 Carbine replicas. Those were fun little carbines for BB guns. Looked just like my own real carbine, but on about a 3/4 scale.
Forgot to include a pic of those Crosman BB guns in the replica M1 carbine design. The little magazines detached and could be filled with a few hundred BBs, but they didn't feed from there. There was a "feed hole" on the top of the barrel and you would pour in about thirty BBs into there from the mag. or anyother BB container. Pretty good power for a spring loaded mechanism, the barrel slid down to load for each shot.
I also briefly owned a BB gun when I was a kid. It had belonged to one of my uncles, and one summer he gave it to me when we were on vacation at my grandparents' at the New Jersey shore, long before much of South Jersey was suburbanized. It had that feed tube that Clint mentioned as well. As I recall, it had a cocking lever under the trigger in order for it to be fired. A buddy and I started taking target practice at some cans and bottles that we had set up on the back fence. It was fun until he accidentally shot me in the calf when I went to set up more targets. Luckily, I was wearing jeans, and all it did was hurt, but the gun disappeared. My mother took it, gave her younger brother all kinds of grief, and I never saw it again. That's probably the last time I ever fired a weapon. Oh wait, I was in ROTC for 2 years in college and we went once to an Army Reserve base firing range. I'm not sure I even hit the target. I did learn to field strip an M-1, though.
The little M1 carbine replicas are still on the farm and shooting well the last time my son visited in July last year. He used them when he was a kid, and he and my brother Jon took one of them down and shot at cans and stuff again just for the fun of it. I also bought him, my oldest son, a multi-pump Crosman as a Christmas present once, he gave it to his little brother, and I don't know where that is anymore. That was a real "power house", you could pump it up to different levels, like three pumps was about the same as a spring loaded BB gun, and by pumping it up to about ten pumps you could almost equal a .22 at short range. I owned a bunch of BB guns over the course of my life, I only miss one of them, a Daisy Co2 powered "target" model that was very deadly and accurate. Don't know where that one went, it got lost in one of the many moves I fear.
the old crossman were pretty powerful, if they were the same as u.k.one's? good to see the relica gun handed down...
I sure would like one of those carbine replicas! I have the Crossman bb gun that my grandpa gave my older brother for his 8th birthday...that would make it 32-33 years old? I was shooting cans with it this fall in fact. The stock is in rough shape and some duct tape fixers on it...but it still shoots and is still accurate!
