Comments on: Whatever happened to toy guns and shooting your friends?

By: moogadestrong

moogadestrong — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:14:55 +0000

I worked for a Toys R Us store for 7 years, and we no longer carried toy guns in any quantity when I worked there. We weren’t forced to do it, as I understand it TRU just wanted to stay on the good side of all of the Mommy run activist/lobbyist groups. While TRU does gain a significant portion of it’s business from Mommies who seem to want to keep their kids in a plastic bubble, I can tell you that by neglecting to stock toy guns TRU lost a TON of business. In the time that I worked there, not a day went by that I didn’t have at least one somebody (usually more)ask me for toy guns, or complain that we didn’t sell them. In fact, I have only spoken to my father once in the last 10 years, and it was when he came in to the store and asked me for toy guns! I myself have fond memories of prolonged summer gun battles w/ my brother and an army of neighbor kids. I actually owned that Machine gun you talked about. I bought it in Mexico when I was 10 years old, and it was the pride of my rather substantial toy gun collection. Alas, for the good old days!

By: Newton Gimmick

Newton Gimmick — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:48:04 +0000

I miss the sweet smell of cap guns.

By: UncleMarsellus

UncleMarsellus — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:00:14 +0000

Entertech!!! I had quite a few. I had the Beretta, which I loved because it was exactly like the Beretta Bruce Willis used in the Die Hard movies, and a couple of machine guns. They were great. My friend and I would go on “missions” all the time into grassy areas by my house with my Rambo knife and we were always well armed with our Entertech guns. I also had many toy guns. Western style revolvers with holsters, cap guns, bolt action wooden and die cast rifles (which I still see now and then, only kid-i-fied) and others. *sigh*

By: Brainlock

Brainlock — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:26:28 +0000

We had an old die-cast “six shooter” with (plastic) ivory handle, which one side of the chamber slid open to hold caps, I think. That side of the gun had broken off before we got it, as I don’t recall it ever having been attached. I keep thinking it was either mom’s or her sister’s from when they were kids?
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Beyond that, we both had BB guns. My brother got a cheapo one for his birthday, and I got a nicer pump action shotgun-style one the following year. (some rule that we had to be 8 for bikes, 10 for BB guns, but we could drive the tractor as soon as we could reach the pedals!??). Our BBs were taken away after he hit me in the hand while chasing the neighbor kid across the yard. He was 30 ft away and my hand was inches away from my face. Our parents shrugged it off.
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A year later, shortly after I got mine, I think he was pulling weeds or something along the carport and no one bothered to ask why I had my BB gun simply because I was outside, instead of watching TV. I casually walked over to him, shot him in the hand and immediately got in trouble. They took away my gun and I couldn’t care less.
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I never fired anything else, but dad insists I have. o…kay?
Heck, I barely even kept most of my GI Joe guns, and usually pulled off the built in vehicular guns, or pretended they were ‘reverse thrusters’ or something if I couldn’t turn them to the rear for ‘booster jets’. LOL
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Firstborn also had a dull green gun that shot disks…until he lost them all shooting at the cats. I saw one of these at WM the other week, but it only came with like ten disks, twice as large as what I remember.

By: chad

chad — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:56:03 +0000

loved the article as why kids today do not have toy guns that a produce of the world becoming pc that and also the world becoming lawsuit happy sue over everything now a days toy makers do not want to take the risk with toy guns not to mention that the toy guns are so real that no one can tell a fake one from a real one without shotting the thing and hurting some one but mostly the kids today are too controled by political correctness and fear of lawsuits.

By: Hourman

Hourman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:30:55 +0000

I dunno if it was Bill Maher or Dennis Miller, but one of those guys riffs on the sad fact that the whole world has become childproofed and here’s an example of even the children’s toys many of us grew with being childproofed out of existence. I’m glad I grew up in a more dangerous era, when I was allowed to play with a Han Solo laser pistol that was molded in black and not in orange. You remember the one – you had to hold down a little button on the handle while you pulled the trigger and it made that awful dentist’s drill noise that drove your grandmother crazy.

FROM MY COLD DEAD HAND!

By: Hourman

Hourman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:21:31 +0000

All my Megos came from a TG&Y or a Ben Franklin, both downtown, both looooooong gone. The space that the TG&Y was in is now a Chinese restaurant and everytime I go in, I think about all the Megos and Star Wars toys and Power Records my Mom and my grandparents bought me there. I’m sure if they had any inkling that 30 years later I’d be buying the same things, they would have probably had me carted off to the looney bin

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:53:07 +0000

In the 80′s there was a fad in toy guns that my friends and I greatly enjoyed: the automatic water gun. You’d fill the “clips” with water and snap them in. I had an Uzi and a pistol. They were AWESOME!!! And they were black, too. We missed the whole weird color and orange/red tips garbage by a few years.

By: Lt. Clutch

Lt. Clutch — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:31:34 +0000

Very informative and entertaining post, Glenn! I wish I had been around during the 60′s so I could have gotten the awesome Bond and U.N.C.L.E. weapons that have become so rare and pricey nowadays. I did have a Frank Serpico boxed set in the 70′s with gun, holster, badge, and other neat stuff. The Al Pacino movie had been released around that time and my parents were huge fans of the real-life police hero.

Toy guns were everywhere around then: My favorites were those neat Luger water guns that you could find in the toy rack at any local U-Totem mini mart. I had a green and brown version which I highly treasured until the unfortunate day that I dropped it on our concrete back yard.

I watched reruns of shows like “Have Gun, Will Travel” and “The Rifleman” so playing cowboy was a favorite activity of mine. One of my mom’s cousins bought me a hat which I still keep to this day. I loved how Paladin dressed in black and looked like the bad guy but was really on the side of good. Richard Boone and Chuck Connors were my idols, along with Vic Morrow’s Sgt. Saunders from the excellent WWII program, Combat!

One of the last guns I ever had was a Star Wars knock-off that my grandmother gave me. It looked a lot like the gun used on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back. It had lights and sounds, a wonderful toy all around. But that one, too, broke easily.

I miss those times of yore and wish kids had it as easy right now. Our childhoods somehow allowed for more use of the imagination and that sort of commodity is a rare find in today’s world.

By: Chip Cataldo

Chip Cataldo — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:27:38 +0000

Fantastic blog, Glenn. I remember the 6-gun cap gun I had when I was a kid..fun times, fun times. Thanks for posting!

Peace,

Chip

By: JuliusMarx

JuliusMarx — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:03:49 +0000

Ah! TG&Y I bought most of my Megos from that store. You left out “Otasco” from your list. They had a great toy section. Where else? “David’s” and “Edison’s” were a few other local favorite deparment stores with great toy departments.
I miss cap guns. I had quite a few of them growing up. The treat was always getting new caps to put in them. Now, as a parent, I can see how loud and annoying they must have been for my parents… but as a kid having that little bubble of gun powder… AWESOME!

By: elvis8batman

elvis8batman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:39:08 +0000

That was a great read Glenn, reminded me of when I was a kid and my brother and I played shooting games with friends in our street. I always preferred the more realistic looking guns, but my favourite ones I think came as part of a Lone Ranger outfit set, which had the mask and a gun belt included.

By: CantinaDan

CantinaDan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:53:29 +0000

Really enjoyed that, Glenn.

Rest assured, playing with toy guns is still alive and well. Johnny, his brothers, and their friends often get together for “Airsoft” wars in the washes near their house. Airsoft guns fire plastic BB’s using compressed air. I’ve also participated with them in some indoor Nerf gun wars.

And, don’t worry, plenty of time is still taken up arguing about who got hit!