Classic Ads: Brap! Brra-a-a-ap!

Little boy love guns.  They love pretending to shoot guns.  In fact, boys probably pretended to shoot guns before they were actually invented. Looking back at my own childhood, a virtual arsenal of toys guns was scattered throughout the neighborhood:  Daisy B-B guns, Wham-O Air Blasters, rifles with puffs of simulated smoke, and....the king of all kiddie firearms:

(click on the ad for a larger view)

Appearing on the backs of DC comics cover-dated August of 1967, the simple illustration of a lucky lad packing serious heat and the alluring sales pitch was enough to get any boy to break into his piggy bank.  The first selling point?...

Sure, considering most of us boys would settle for stray tree branches or baseball bats as impromptu gun stand-ins, "authenticity" wasn't high on our list....but when a toy gun was said to be the most authentic toy gun we've "ever seen", well...that captured our moth-like attention spans.

Here...you be the judge.  The top photo is an actual M-16 5.6 mm assault rifle, and the bottom photo is an actual Mattel M-16 Marauder:

Sidenote:  When the M-16 was used by American forces in Viet-Nam, its small size, use of plastic parts and frequent jamming caused frustrated soldiers to apply the term "You Can Tell It's a Mattel" to the troubled weapon (which happened to be the toy company's official slogan at the time). In fact, this disparaging label was so common, an actual urban legend popped up claiming that soldiers noticed the Mattel logo on the M-16's handgrip, which Mattel had supposedly manufactured.  No doubt Mattel's toy M-16 further blurred the distinction between myth and reality.

Okay, back to the ad: As cool as the promise of visual authenticity was, it was the M-16 Marauder's authentic sound that really grabbed our imaginations...

What more could a young lad ask for than "a solid blast a whole minute long"?  With the "loud, realistic sound of the actual M-16 rifle", no less?

(Because if anyone could verify its uncanny similarity to the sounds of an actual M-16 rifle, it was midwestern grade school boys with not even a millisecond of real weapon experience).

Well, because the toy gun looked and sounded so much like the real thing, it quickly fell out of fashion as anti-war sentiment grew through the late 60's, to the point where toy guns were virtually gone from stores by 1969. However, enough of the M-16 Marauders remained in toy boxes and were passed down from big brothers for me to experience their "authenticity" during my early-to-mid 70's boyhood.

As time wore on and the moral landscape steadily darkened, kids packing ultra-realistic toy firearms became a thing of the past as cartoon-like fantasy guns and orange-tipped machine guns eventually replaced their "authentic" plastic predecessors.

UPDATE: I stand corrected! Almost a year after posting this, I received this clarification from Dan Childers, an ex-Sargeant with the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division:

"The "urban legend" you mention is in fact, true. The Mattel company did make the plastic and spring steel handguards and stocks of the early M-16 under license. I had one. The winking crowned emblem and "Mattel" were clearly stamped into it. The legend is that they made the WEAPON, which initially used underpowered ammunition, and often jammed."

Thanks for the insight, Dan! 

Comments

[suedenim]

What was the "action" on these guns, anyway? Some kind of spring-loaded system? I dimly remember having a somewhat similar "Planet of the Apes" themed rifle as a kid, don't think it could fire for as long as a minute, though.

[Mark Engblom]

No clue. Back then, we seldom questioned how anything worked....we just squeezed the trigger and let 'er rip. When we were curious about how something worked, we would usually take it apart until....well...it no longer worked.

[Rich]

Wow, I almost posted this exact ad earlier this week. I'm glad you did it though, as there's no way I would have done as much research and writing. ;)

Different times, those were.

[Wade Wilkin]

Different times is right. We would run all over the neighborhood playin' "War" with the other kids. We had quite an arsenal. I'll never forget the Christmas, 1964 I think, that my parents gave my brother and I Johnny 7 O-M-A's! That really tilted the balance of power in our favor! I wish paintball would have come along a little sooner than it did...

[Mark Engblom]

Absolutely, Wade! There's alot of cool stuff around now that makes me wish I was born a few decades later. Not that I can't experience it now...but I'm afraid the spectacle of a forty-something guy running around the neighborhood with a paintball gun....well, there'd just be too many questions.

[Thom]

Dude, paint ball back in the day! How cool would that have been. I'm SURE they wouldn't have hurt as much as those little yellow pellets we shot at each other or the rocks we used for hand grenades! Yes, different time indeed!

[HUNTER]

You guys should check out Mil-Sim airsoft. It's a very mature hobby and many people are into it around the world.

[paintball sniper]

These guns just get more and more life like