Some Ray Guns

[dratomic]

I've managed top pick up a bunch of interesting guns for very little money lately, and now that I've found my camera, I figured I'd share a few pics.

The first is the Tomi Gun, by Shawnee Manufacturing. It's not too common in any color -- I've already got a rare yellow one with box. But this is the first time I've seen one in green. (Other known colors include white with blue details and red with red details.)

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The Tomi stores water in a rubber bulb in the back of the gun. When the trigger is pulled, a lever pushes up against this bulb, squeezing the water out the gun's barrel.

Next we have two guns made in the Fifties by a German company called Ideal. (I don't believe they're associated with Ideal in the U.S., but I could be wrong. If anyone has more info, I'd love to hear your thoughts.) Both feature unusual space men that spin freely within the barrel. While I like the larger one more, the smaller green one is actually rarer. (Though by how much is the real question.)

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I wouldn't call this blue Space Rover water pistol rare, but it's not something you see every day. I'm sure it comes in other colors, though I can't remember seeing them. I don't know who made it. Since it doesn't say "Hong Kong" on it, I'm guessing it's from the Fifties, probably towards the end of the decade.

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Finally, we have an unnamed water pistol by Park Plastics. Again, no designation of "Hong Kong," so it's a pretty safe guess that it's from the Fifties. These come up on ebay a lot, though they're sometimes missing a fin or two. As usual, they were made in a rainbow of colors.

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What's interesting about all the above transluscent water pistols is that the pipe running the water from the storage to the tip of the gun is molded into the upper portion of the toy's body; there is no rubber tube running though the center. This leaves the space gun with an uncluttered interior, and really lets the details shine through. Rarely do later water pistols have this feature.

[Phil R]

Dr A, nice to hear from you on water guns. Nice pickups. Most people don't realize that Tomi is an older gun. I managed to pick up a bub-l gun with the box. I took a chance on it because the person said it had tape on it. Turns out the tape was removable and made no sense why it was there. The box is great and was never punched out for the diecut. The price was great. :)

Also had you ever gotten the 1999 Marvin Martian gun water gun ? I think it's the nicest modern gun ever made. I got it recently on the card. It's about 9".

Also this moring I saw a water gun that puzzled me. I didn't buy it because of some issues around the trigger which probably wasn't a big deal. It looked much like the long Cosmic water gun with two triggers and handholds. However it was clear plastic, the back trigger is a clicker trigger connected to internal springs, etc and the front is the water gun. Unusual. ;)

[dratomic]

It's funny -- the front of the Martian gun looks like that of the Atom Matic...

So Phil, I was hoping you could tell me -- have you seen any versions of the blue gun I posted (i.e., other colors)? It seems uncommon to me, but I've never paid much attention to the clear plastic water pistols until recently. I know you've collected them for a while... Have you come across it before? Any sense of whether or not it's common?

I've seen the Bub-L-Rocket box before. It definitely on the rarer side -- more often than not, the toy's found on its card. But while the card's not quite as rare, it does have spacier graphics. Which sort of begs a mystery -- why does a gun called the "Bub L Rocket" have a box with no space graphics? I'm guessing the box came before the card, and maybe with the success of the toy, they switched to packaging that could be displayed by the cash register. In doing so, they gave it super spacey graphics to get kids to indulge in an impulse buy. Or something along those lines.

Regardless, it's the least threatening space gun EVER. :)

[Phil R]

Actually , I've had the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon ray guns for years, but only became active in the other ray guns in the past several years. I don't have that many water guns. At least I don't consider it that many. next year when I change cabinets for display I want to take up to date photos.

As to the space rover blue water gun, I haven't found it in collection photos. It may be called something else even though the lettering is embossed. It's got to be in some collector's or dealer's photos ;) That's the fun of it, there are so many and so little time :rolleyes:

[Fineas J. Whoopie]

Very nice pictures doc. The Ideal guns are impressive in person aren't they? I don't think I've ever seen the blue one, or at least I don't remember seeing it, but I have only been checking out space squirt guns for the last three or four years. I like it very much. I've always like the red Parks gun too but never knew about the stem being built in. very interesting.

Phil - I love that Marvin the Martian gun, wasn't it sold as a tie-in to the Space Jam movie? They certainly got it right over at Warner bros when they designed this gun. I wonder if this design (and I agree doc that the tip looks a lot like the Atom Matic) was first put together for the Space Jam movie or if it was taken from the original Bugs Bunny cartoons from the fifties? I'd like to think it's from the original cartoons.

[Andyman]

Some nice hardware there, Doc.

Space Jam was a silly movie but they did produce some nice toys. I particularly like the "Martian Maggot" rocket.

[Sonny Young]

Nice guns Dr. I like those with the spacemen inside.

I'm not sure about your dating, though I could be wrong. Japan made toys toys from the late 1940s through the 1960s. As wages increased, manufacturing moved to Hong Kong in the mid 1960s, then to Taiwan in the 1970s, and finally to China in the 1980s, where most of it takes place today. I've always dated toys marked "Hong Kong" as mid 1960s-early 1970s. I remember playing with those Park Plastic pistols in the '60s.

[dratomic]

These are all American (or German) guns, none of them are Japanese. Park Plastic is an American company dating from the Fifties, and all of their toys in that decade were produced in the U.S.A. They started marking their toys with HONG KONG or CHINA once they moved production over there by the mid- to late Sixties -- if it's not marked as such, that means it was made before that point... i.e., in the USA, most likely in the Fifties/very early Sixties.

I'm rushing, so I don't know if the above makes total sense, but you see what I'm getting at.

Plastic ray guns are pretty easy to date, both because of country marks, "stopper" styles, and tip styles, believe it or not. These have all the tell-tale signs of US-made, Fifties/early Sixties.

[Sonny Young]

Okay, I gotcha. Makes sense.

Good luck with them

[toyboy]

Hey Dr A - Congrats on getting those guns.

Nice "X-Ray" picts of the guns too!

I like that. I've never seen the guns like that before.

Thanks for going through the trouble and shooting them like that for us!

[dratomic]

Heh. No worries -- though the X-Ray pics looked cooler in real life than in the photos. I put that weird material over my computer screen, which provided the backlighting. And everything around it was DARK. But when my camera snapped the shot, the shutter stayed open for so long that pretty much everything became illuminated.

Oh well. Came out okay. ;)

[toyboy]

I just came across these photos of the box for the IDEAL Martian ray guns.

Not sure if it helps...

Pretty neat artwork regardless.

[MaxPower]

I just came across these photos of the box for the IDEAL Martian ray guns.

Not sure if it helps...

Pretty neat artwork regardless.

That box artwork is FANTASTIC! And the guns themselves are tremendously appealing too.

Congratulations on your splendid collection, Dr., and thank you, (and toyboy), for sharing those beautiful photos with us.

MaxPower

[Morbius]

That box artwork is FANTASTIC! And the guns themselves are tremendously appealing too.

Congratulations on your splendid collection, Dr., and thank you, (and toyboy), for sharing those beautiful photos with us.

MaxPower

Ditto that comment, MAXPOWER. Boxes RULE!!

[dratomic]

Nice -- thanks for the pics. It's a great box. The Germans definitely knew how to produce some excellent space art.