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MEMORIES:
retrophile remembers...Hell yeah! Pop, pop click, click, click, pop, click, click, pop, click. Man these guns were great. The smell, the ... More »
Posted on 02/25/08
PHOTOS:
Manufacturer:
To the dismay of parents everywhere, very few (if any) child grows up making a hero out pacifists. No kid ever ran outside excited for a rousing game of bankers and philanthropists or begged their parents for a talking Ghandi doll. No account exists of a child ever posing in front of the mirror in a pair of Saint Francis of Assisi underwear. No kid ever looked at a RISK board and wanted to play as the U.N. any peacemaker that isn’t the six-shot kind
No, sadly, gladly, or however you choose to look at it, unless the peacemaker was the six-shot kind, kids didn’t show much interest. Their loyalties were pledged to Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Hopalong Cassidy couldn’t do wrong and everyone secretly hoped for an invitation to join Marshall Dillon’s posse. They love G.I Joe and Han Solo and every other cowboy from eras past to ages imagined. And every one of those heroes carried the means to protect the innocent and foil the evil-doer in a convenient belt holster that announced to all present that having fun was serious business.
From shapely sticks to carved wooden rifles, enter the next stage of reality-spiced imagination.
The technology for the cap gun dates back all the way to the end of the War of Sessession in 1865. With warehouses full of now useless munitions, desperate factory owners turned weapons of war into a trade of toys. Gunpowder caps provided loud but harmless fun for kids and profit for dying weapon manufacturers.
It wasn’t until after World War II, when T.V. serials made icons out of innumerable gunslingers, that the cap gun entered its heyday. Cap companies sprang up across the map, marketing their wares alongside cinema stars. Some companies produced their own assemblies with names such as “Stallion 45,” “Mustang,” and of course, “Cowboy.”
Several variations exist, including rifles and semi-automatics, but the most popular and available cap guns were fashioned after revolvers. Most of these featured a six or eight shot cap “ring” that fit neatly into the cylinder of the gun and snapped loudly when fired. Another style was the “strip” or “paper” cap, a rolled tape of powder pockets that generally fed out of the pistol hammer. Some cap guns even had small pellets that would spit out the barrel when the pistol was fired. As cap gun became more an more realistic, safety laws were put in place requiring that a brightly colored fitting be placed over the end of the barrel.
Over the years, various threats have risen: robbers, redcoats, nazis, outlaws, imperial troops, rustlers… the list goes on and will go on as long as imagination is a part of childhood. Critics denounce the violent nature of such toys but thousands of kids will tell you that cap guns aren’t about shooting bad guys. They’re about being a hero.
