Space Rocket Gun (U.S. Plastics / U.S. / 1953 / 3.5 x 5 inches)

You want space-age style? Fine. Here's your space-age style!

I bought this ray gun when I first began collecting, after falling in love with a picture of it in the book Ray Gun, by Eugene Metcalf. I couldn't get over the wildly designed front site; the rings at the end of the barrel; the embossed planets, stars, and rockets; and all the other little details that helped give the gun such a strong sense of movement. I mean, this thing screamed "Space Gun," positively bellowed it from the top of the mountain.

But there were two details that the photo in Metcalf's book failed to convey. First, the gun is actually made of two different colored halves. It can be found in a wide combination of colors, including -- in no particular pairing -- red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white. I'm pretty sure I've seen silver, and possibly a mottled, marbled kind of color. It's a nice touch that adds even more playfulness to the gun's design.

The second omission is more my fault than the book's. See, Metcalf was kind enough to include some raw data on each toy, including manufacturer, date (when known), country of origin, material, and size. The thing is, I didn't pay too much attention to these details when I first got the book. And the photos, well, let's just say they didn't convey scale very well.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the package containing this gun and discovered that somehow U.S. Plastics managed to cram so much detail onto a toy that's only five inches long. Yep, this here space blaster is teeny-tiny. A hold-out gun, the kind of thing you keep secreted away in your boot cuff until you can see the whites, pinks, greens, and yellows of the Venusian's 36 eyes. Then you whip it out and blast him!

I've got to say, though, I really like the gun's small size. It makes all the embossing that much more impressive. It's like a miniature work of art; like scrimshaw for the junior spaceman. Any larger and the Space Clicker would probably just look garish.

This simple clicker gun is pretty easy to find on eBay, and usually doesn't sell for too much money. Often, though, the trigger is broken and swings freely. Also, the small bit sticking out from the top of the gun, directly above the trigger, is commonly missing. If you're trying to add one to your collection, play it smart and hold out for a mint example -- you won't be waiting long, and you won't pay very much.

A simple, inexpensive, cheaply made little toy, one that was sold out of bins at the front of toy stores -- who would have guessed that today it'd be considered a classic?

Rocket Jet Space Gun (U.S. Plastics / 1953 / U.S. / 4.5 x 5.5 inches); Space Gun (Plast-Trix / 1950s / U.S. / 4 x 4.5 inches)

It's been a while since I've written about ray guns, so today I'm featuring two. Talk about... wait for it... bang for your buck! (That pun's for you, Andy!)

I really love these little guns. They're simple toys, and do what you expect a squirt gun to do: squirt water. Bu their looks -- now that's something special! The smooth, metallic finish looks nearly liquid in the right light, like the toy was made out of mercury or something. Pretty darn striking.

The Rocket Jet has a few variations. This one's all silver, but the toy's also often found with a bright, orange trigger. The tip, which is concave like the front of an old-school jet engine, is also sometimes orange. There's another version out there with a translucent red trigger. However, I've got to say, the pure silver version's my favorite.

The trigger guard is often missing on the Rocket Jet. It's usually a clean break, and you often can't tell anything was supposed to be there.

The other gun, which, as far as I know, has no special name, is a little less common than the Rocket Jet. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about it. I'm going to assume there are variations out there, but I couldn't tell you what they look like.

Those swoopy looking marks on the gun -- under the back fin, under the front of the decorative side piece -- are actually part of the plastic. This "marbling" is common in metallic plastic, and many collectors (myself included) look for it specifically.

Regardless of my feelings about the all-silver Rocket Jet, I really love the red trigger and stopper on this gun. The colors pop like fireworks.

Like I said, these are your standard water pistols: fill 'em up and piss off the cat. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the tip of the un-named gun is a white, hexagonal piece of plastic. Many, many water pistols from the 1950s had these types of tips, and they're a surefire way to tell whether a gun is modern or not. In most cases, this tip will be brass colored (or, actually made from brass). Again, a great way to ID an older water pistol.

U.S. Plastics used an incredibly thin material when making the Rocket Jet. If you shine a light through it, you can see the water pistol mechanism.

U.S. Plastics, who mad the Rocket Jet, also produced a number of Space Patrol ray guns. I don't know much about Plas-Trix, but they've got a pretty funky name and the company was based out of Brooklyn, NY, so they've gotta be at least kind of cool, right? Right.

I was actually pretty dismissive of water pistols when I first began collecting. There are so many of the translucent, plastic ones floating around, and it seemed like most were produced in Hong Kong during the latter half of the Twentieth century. Heck, I grew up with the things. They're still produced today! Pshaw!

But then I started to give them a closer look, and I realized I was being a kind of dumb. Many of the greatest plastic ray guns from the 1950s and early Sixties happened to be water pistols, and by ignoring them I was denying myself some amazing additions to my collection. So I hired a thug to knock some sense into me. Too bad I didn't know that his cough syrup addiction made him meaner than your average roustabout, because that beating went on a little longer than I'd have liked. But it must have worked, because before I could say, "Hey, I've still got one tooth left!" I was logged into eBay and bidding on water pistols. I haven't looked back since. (Mostly because I can't really turn my head too far in either direction anymore.)

So let my pain be a lesson for you: Don't get all snooty about your collection, don't limit yourself, and don't hire a thug with a wicked addiction to cough syrup.

Space Patrol Cosmic Smoke Gun (U.S. Plastics / 1950s / U.S. / 3 x 6; 3 x 4.5)

The TV series Space Patrol, which ran from 1950 to 1955, helped usher in the space craze of the 1950s. It's no surprise, then, that it also spawned a mountain of merchandise, including the wonderful Cosmic Smoke Guns.

This was the type of toy you can have fun with. It fires a puff of powder that does pretty much whatever kids in the 1950s needed it to do depending on what type of alien or evil overlord was attacking them. Of course, since the alien or evil overlord was probably being played by the kid next door, the most likely affect of the powder was temporary blindness and a face that looked like the third day of a cocaine bender. But all in good fun, right?

The Cosmic Smoke Gun was a mail-away cereal premium; send in a number of box tops and a couple quarters, wait six to eight weeks, and the toy magically ended up in your mailbox. It was available in two sizes: five and six inches. Each size also came in one of two colors: red and metallic green. However, the small green gun and the large red gun are both exceedingly rare; the reverse colors -- large and green, small and red -- pop up on eBay all the time. (A large red one did, however, recently appeared on eBay -- I wrote about it here.) However, even the common versions of the toy can still fetch good money since so many different people want to get them: Space Patrol collectors, ray gun collectors, powder-shooter collectors (seriously, they exist), and cereal premium collectors.

Leslie Singer, author of Zap!, has said that the red Cosmic Smoke Gun is his favorite ray gun, and it's easy to understand why. The toy's creatively designed, compact, and has great play value. Personally, I like the green one more -- I'm a sucker for metallic colors -- but regardless, I wholeheartedly agree that this toy is one of the greats.

I snagged my green one off eBay -- of course -- but the red one was an honest-to-goodness antique store find. That's rare in this day and age; and often, when a toy does show up in a store (or at a toy show or a flea market), it's way overpriced. Not so with this one, which sold for a couple bucks below what it usually gets online. I should also point out that I own my good buddy Donald Conner a tip of the hat -- he was the one who actually found this piece and then gave me the heads up so I could get it.

By the way, if you'd like to learn more about Space Patrol, check out the excellent Solar Guard Space Patrol Web Site.