Processed Plastics No. 5759 Laser Rescue Team Set

Now here's a really cool set I purchased during the lockdown, and - if I'm not mistaken - came from The Netherlands (or was it Belgium??). Anywho, while it did take a while to get here, the wait was worth it. This set comes with a 'ray gun' (flashlight), a ray gun rifle which makes clicking noises, and one of Processed Plastics iconic spaceships with two astronaut figures measuring 1.5"H (3.81cm). Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The battery compartment is on the side facing the cardboard and I did not remove the rifle to test it out.

This appears to be the heat shield from the capsule

Wondertreats, Inc. Ray Gun Water Pistol

I got kind of busy today and almost forgot to make a post. Saturday's are normally reserved for Sci-Fi and Fantasy but I really din't have much prepared until looking through some of my files. Back on May 5th I blogged a cool - and cheap - Transformer-ish Robot from Wondertreats. The toy came in a kiddie Easter basket on sale after the holiday which also included a couple of other toys, one of which was this ray gun water pistol, or squirt gun as we called them when I was a young 'un. Gosh, I haven't owned a squirt gun since, ummmm, oh heck, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the years! :-) Normally ray guns don't stay in my collection long and except for perhaps a couple of vintage types, they just don't appeal to my collecting instincts. This one too will eventually end up at the thrift store for some kid to enjoy but for now you can Enjoy!

M&L Toy Co. Atomic Ball Gun

We've covered a lot of vintage space ship toys here on Toys and Stuff but haven't even scratched the surface with space men, space related playsets, and space guns. I s'pose now is as good a time as any to start covering something other than space ships (although there's still plenty to post) so why not begin with space guns, or ray guns, whichever you prefer.  Growing up in the '50s my toys tended to center around cowboy & western, and little green Army men stuff, but I did like space and sci-fi movies. It's just that my toy guns were mostly Roy Rogers type cap pistols or Civil War muskets HOWEVER I do remember having a plastic space gun which shot spring loaded flying discs or flying saucers. After some searching around I found out those were made by the U.S. Plastic Co. in the 1950s.

Space/ray guns have been around since at least the days of the earliest comic strips and Buck Rogers yielded futuristic looking weapons in the late 1920s. On screen they appeared in the world's first talkie sci-fi flick Just Imagine from 1930 (see below). The weapons they're carrying is an unusual over the fingers design and the props themselves would be re-utilized in later Flash Gordon serials.

Here you see a ray gun in action in the first Flash Gordon serial, starring Buster Crabbe, in 1936

Here, Buster Crabbe, America's Greatest Action Hero, stars as Buck Rogers. The pistol shown here would be released as a cap firing toy in the 1930s by the  Daisy Manufacturing Co. There were several different models that all now command premium prices

Which brings us to the subject of today's post: the M&L Toy Co. Atomic Ball Gun. M&L (Morris and Louis - brothers) of Union City, New Jersey started I believe in 1946 (or '48). Other than that I know little of their output but some years back I got an Atomic Ball Gun as part of an eBay lot. I wasn't really interested in space guns, preferring to stick with space ships, and I subsequently sold it but you can at least check it out here. I would imagine they came in a variety of colors. Mine was yellow and the box below shows a red gun and it was common at the time to make any given toy in a rainbow of color selections.

Replica box seen below can be ordered through Toy Tent: http://www.toytent.com/TrueReplica/40254.html

Enjoy!