...from a time when it was still okay for kids to play with toy guns.

My sister and her 8 year old son are visiting from out of town.  Of course my 5 year old always wants to be with his older cousin.  Well, whenever they get together they go into my mom's attic and pull out my old "arsenal".  I always forget about these until they pull them out.

Here's my old toy carbine.  The FSB is broken off and you have to "reset" the trigger manually, but it's in pretty good shape for its age.  Must be late '70s - early '80s.  I guess it would "technically" be a GAU-5/A/A because it has no FA :



Here's the "sanitized" maker marking.  I guess even when I was little I knew "made in Hong Kong" was bad.


And here's my toy M16 made by "Empire", early '80s vintage.  I remember riding my bike several miles to K-Mart to buy it with allowance money.  It has a few "modifications".  I specifically remember making it a flat-top with a hack saw.  I don't remember ever seeing a flat-top as there weren't any in service (that I know of) when I was a kid.  I guess I was ahead of times.  The paint job was done with a two-part stencil I made and Testors spray paints.  The thirty round mag is made from cardboard and duct tape and fits over the factory 20 rounder.  The M203 is made from a paper towel roll (of course).  The barrel and FSB are broken off forward of the handguards, but I have it glued and clamped down in the basement as I type this so my son can get some more use out of it:





I hope you all enjoy the nostalgia!

Hmm, the second one is a flat top, you need to move this thread to the regular AR discussion board!

Seriously, back in the 70's I remember having some killer plastic guns. My favorite was a pretty good replica of an M1 Thompson with horizontal handguard and 30 round stick mag. Nowadays, if some kid carried it, the first officer that saw it would blade at 45 degree and have a draw down with him.


Sorry for the GD forum lingo.

Quoted: My favorite was a pretty good replica of an M1 Thompson with horizontal handguard and 30 round stick mag.

I had that one, too!  But it's long gone now.

There's a pretty nice AK47 sitting up in the attic, too, but the barrel and gas tube on that one are also broken off forward of the handguards.

Hmm, the second one is a flat top, you need to move this thread to the regular AR discussion board!

Love the grenade launcher !

Here's a 1969 Moon Rifle for huntin' Moon Men

Reminds me of how old I am... miss the good ole days

I had a sweet toy AR10 or M16 with a charging handle inside the carrying handle.  You'd pull the charging handle all the way to the rear and a spring powered a full-auto noise maker and made a red thing go in and out of the muzzle.  The thing was big, too.  I'd love to have one, just 'cuz . . .

Used to have a cool toy M16...realistic all plastic with brown painted stock, grip & triangle forearm.  No orange tip to be seen.  I thought it was kinda goofy that the furniture was brown.....turns out it was just retro before retro was cool.

Coolest toy gun was a plastic clicker M1 Garand....green painted stock though
Also had a camo M1 Thompson cap gun (real old school, took paper roll caps, not the newer plastic strip style)
All metal full sized Luger & 1911 cap pistols that took paper roll caps
cap pineapple grenade

I must have had every single toy gun that was made while growing up. One of my favorites was a silver M-16 that was a copy of the first one that Stoner built(with the REAL narrow Bake-alite handguards)that used those plastic stripper caps. That company made escellent copies of most other guns on the market,I bought most of them. Man! To have those toys now!

I used to have a plastic and steel 1919 Browning .30 machinegun.  It had a little crank on the side.  You put in a roll of caps that had little perforations in the paper and the gun had a round steel wheel with teeth that would slide into the perforations.  You would turn the crank and it would rotate the wheel which would pull the caps up and they would fire.  So, it was like a gattling gun.  The faster you turned the crank, the faster the ROF.  Caps were 50 in a roll I think.  I also had a greasegun made the same way out of plastic and steel.  Had a collapsible stock made of steel.  It also had the crank and would use the same type of caps.  They really made some neat stuff in those days.  Mine were made in the late 50's.  

Charles Tatum

I was a kid in the '50's and early '60's, and had a lot of those already mentioned, but the hands-down coolest was actually a model kit...of a P-08 ["Luger"]...You had to actually assemble it, much like a model car kit...It was all green plastic, and the proportions were way off (it was *huge*!), but it was way cool!!!  

There was also a company in the '50's making wood and metal (potmetal, I suppose) models of the M1903, Garand, and BAR...They were about a foot long, and were very nice...Even had the bayonets...  

I remember that "grease gun" mentioned above; it had a bright red plastic part somewhere in the front...The front grip/mag well maybe??? Yeah! The 50-round rolls of caps were cool, too...You could sit a roll on a brick and hit them with a hammer to make a *really* loud BANG!!!  

I still have hearing loss from that...  

My favorite was the transistor radio that turned into a gun, it was from THE MAN FROM UNCLE TV show. Of course I played with it till it broke and it got tossed.

I had two M16's, one a Marauder that my parent's relieved me of - then I ended up with a more 'accurate' representation when I was older - fixed 30 rnd mag but IIRC, took a roll of caps into the bottom that fed up into it. It wasn't as well made as the Marauder, but it was very detailed. The whole thing was a silvery almost green grey color though - we were going to paint the stocks black but never did.

My best friend had a Thompson that did the same thing, and I loved that Thompson more I admit. Of course, they weighed the same thing, not like a real Thompson that weighs 11# unloaded! The ergonomics of the Thompson are really amazing though - they feel really good, just heavy. I still wonder what ever happened to those old M16 toys - I too wish I had them now, just for giggles. I did a LOT of low-crawling with those two guns. We never used caps much - too expensive, just made Ratatatat sounds with our mouths.

I had one of the M-1 rifles that had the cartridges that loaded into it somehow...Can't remember anymore, that was back in the stone age (Early 1960's). My dad also made the mistake of getting me a battery-operated toy M-14 for Xmas one year. He could'nt wait for the batteries to run down!
From the late 1960's, I remember having what was either an AR-10 or M-16 water gun. I didn't like it being all black, so I painted the stock, grip and handguards Testor's brown. Different from any other water gun I had seen, before or since!  You pull the trigger, "Squirt". BUT...There was also a CRANK that inserted on the side, and when you turned that puppy, it went "SQUIRT squirtsquirtsquirtssquirtsquirt...", like it wa s "au to" or something!
I annoyed a neighbor so much he grabbed the end of it and almost broke it off. His older brother was in the Army at the time in Vietnam.

Quoted: One of my favorites was a silver M-16 that was a copy of the first one that Stoner built(with the REAL narrow Bake-alite handguards)that used those plastic stripper caps. That company made escellent copies of most other guns on the market,I bought most of them. Man! To have those toys now!

I had one of those...a friend and I found it out in the desert one day back in the early 80's.

It was missing the "clip" that went into the pistol grip which held the strip of caps, but that was ok by me since the original M-16 had a hollow grip as well.

Like most toys, it got tossed, but I still have fond memories of it.

That same company made other guns with the same design: I had a 1911, a Luger (it had a detachable silencer), and a Walther PP-type. Each had a clip (not a mag since it wasn't spring-loaded) that held the strip of special plastic caps that went into the grip, and then you pulled the trigger to fire each cap in the strip. The neat thing was that it would eject the spent cap each time you fired it.

Oh, and they also sold a .38 snub-nosed revolver, that had a detachable silencer, and the cylinder would swing open to accept the plastic caps. It wasn't as fun as the autos, though.

While we are on the subject of toys, I picked up a bag of green army men for my six year old the other day. Is it just me, or has the quality of these things gone down? It looks like the molds are just worn out. The troops are a bad quality plastic and there is sprue everywhere. OTOH, they still put M48 tanks in there with the troops.

For the mods, just for the record, the little green army men carried A1 M-16's, so this thread is still retro! Then again, they were M16's, maybe I should move this to the class 3 forum

Here is a picture of me around 1973-74 time frame with my rifle. I can not recall what exact model mine was. Still was fun to play with.

Cool thread

Quoted: While we are on the subject of toys, I picked up a bag of green army men for my six year old the other day. Is it just me, or has the quality of these things gone down? It looks like the molds are just worn out. The troops are a bad quality plastic and there is sprue everywhere. OTOH, they still put M48 tanks in there with the troops. For the mods, just for the record, the little green army men carried A1 M-16's, so this thread is still retro! Then again, they were M16's, maybe I should move this to the class 3 forum

Probably so.  IIRC the molds have circulated around a bit over the years & are past their prime.  There was some website I came across that was dedicated to plastic army men & showed the various manufacturers/generations, etc.

I love the bloop tube on the second one too.

I love being reminded of my childhood. I can't even remember how many toy guns I had growing up in the 70's and 80's. I wish I had more pictures of them.

While this isn't exactly a toy, it was aimed at a similar age group. I had one in the mid to late 1980's and traded it for something else. This one belongs to a friend who was smart enough to keep his. It is a Crossman AIR 17 BB/Pellet gun.

Quoted: I love being reminded of my childhood. I can't even remember how many toy guns I had growing up in the 70's and 80's. I wish I had more pictures of them. While this isn't exactly a toy, it was aimed at a similar age group. I had one in the mid to late 1980's and traded it for something else. This one belongs to a friend who was smart enough to keep his. It is a Crossman AIR 17 BB/Pellet gun. s149.photobucket.com/albums/s71/45Bravo/MVC-674S.jpg s149.photobucket.com/albums/s71/45Bravo/MVC-688S.jpg s149.photobucket.com/albums/s71/45Bravo/MVC-685S.jpg

I still have one identical to this one, that is still in use today in the never-ending war against my neighbors' dogs. I think it was around '86 when I got it.