1930 - Pistol Flashlight / Flash-Lite Gun by unknown

[Joe K.]

(Edited...)

The dated 1950 Miles Kimball catalog cover:

In the lower, left hand corner: "Copyright 1950 Miles Kimball Company".

 

This page, specifically:

The Flash Ray Gun by a yet-to-be-determined manufacturer (a Goggle search yielded this image and I believe it to be the same one as in this catalog):

While really just an aluminum flashlight with a pistol grip and trigger, the description promotes it as a "ray gun".

 

 

In 1936 The Flash Ray Gun was marketed this way:

[Brian..]

This is the plain metal flashlight gun, but if you recall, Miles Kimball called it a ray gun emitting  "Death rays to Buck Rogers fans". On sale in October 1948 in the Robesonian. Who made it?

[Joe K.]

Here's a 1930 Gellman Brothers catalog with a "Pistol Flashlight" sighting:

I noticed that the description for this item says "nickel plated". Wouldn't that indicate that it is made of steel/tin, with a nickel plating over it?

If so, then, perhaps two separate timeline entries are required. One for a steel / nickel plated version, and another one for the aluminum version (see the first post in this thread).

 

What say you, Brian?

 

The BIN catalog listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Collectible-Gellman-Brothers-World-of-Gellman-1930-Catalog-No-41/163335432449?hash=item26078ce901:g:ufgAAOSw2kNbWfbP:rk:2:pf:0

 

[Brian..]

That's an early sighting, Joe.

 

I was never convinced of this gun's space credentials. Now it looks as though it started life as a flashlight pistol in 1930. By 1936 it's a G Man gun. In the 1950s it's advertised as a ray gun, though the box doesn't make any such claim. 

 

A great example or promoting an old toy to cash in on the G-Man interest in the 1930s then space interest in the late 1940s. 

[Nick Danger]

Here's something that finished on eBay a few weeks ago.  It's not quite the same gun in the 1936 ad (that one has a plain, black handle, this one has a lithographed handle), but the G-Man reference tells me that either the original ad was put together before the lithography was complete, or the toy was "upgraded" sometime shortly after.  I didn't end up picking this up (I only have so much room, and this, strictly speaking, isn't a raygun), but you can see some spots of rust in the photos, indicating that the toy is made of tin or steel, unlike my 1940s version which is aluminum.