Monday, June 21, 2010

reach for it!

Remember roll cap guns?  I used to own a bunch of authentic looking roll cap guns.  When I was growing up the toy companies had already started making guns from plastic rather than metal.  I remember going on neighborhood recon patrol with a plastic Thompson.  I also carried one or two aluminum 45 caliber rollcap guns.  I used to have an arsenal of rollcap guns.  I never knew when I was going to need them, so I had one or two buried/hidden in ammo cans around the wooded areas of the neighborhood.  It's still not a bad idea.

The history of cap guns go back to the end of the Civil War.  Gun manufacturers found themselves without weapons contracts and decided to start manufacturing war toys.  Cap guns are still around today but definitely not what they used to be.  As a kid, half the fun of owning a cap gun was that it looked like the real thing.  I remember my brother having a German Luger cap gun.  I don't know where he got it, but it was so very cool. It was either made of a cast iron or aluminum.  I can't recall.
There were lots of cool looking cap guns in the 50's and 60's.  Those were the ones that I remember the most.  Kids were out shooting at each other with imaginary bullets from guns from their favorite television shows.  Heck, there were even cap guns that shot plastic bullets. The advantage to having a gun that shot plastic projectiles was during close combat.

Today cap guns are all plastic and bright fluorescent.  I know if I were a kid today, I'd be coating my plastic arsenal down with aerosol paint to make it look real!

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