From slot cars to the Marx Electro Shot Shooting Gallery

[ourwayband]

[hoganracing]

Nice find, Rusty. Looks like a lot of fun.

Patrick

[TuscoTodd]

THAT is just plain COOL!

[waaytoomuchintothis]

My younger cousin got one for Christmas one year. That is the loudest toy ever devised. A real Thompson is barely quieter than that thing is. My mother was convinced her brother had bought it for his boy as a practical joke on his sisters. As Christmas night went on, she kept looking at her brother for a punchline or something, meanwhile, that thing was literally like a never ending bunch of ball bearings being thrown at a tin sheet. Eventually it was giving me a headache and I stopped playing with it, but my cousin was still hammering away with it when we went home.

[ourwayband]

Yea it is loud but the wife says my hearing is going anyway... :D

Rusty

[dreinecke]

Rusty - that is simply too cool! I'd wanted one of those or one similar as a kid. Very nice piece of history and I'm glad you were able to get it going again!

[ourwayband]

David,it was fun to finally hear it come to life.Looks like it had been in a barn for years.
This is one vintage toy that lives up to it's 60's advertising..
Kinda like shooting your Red Rider BB Rifle in the house,but not getting in trouble doing it.. ;)
Rusty

[waaytoomuchintothis]

There was another toy by a less well-known maker that was made to look like a .50 caliber aircraft machine gun. Targets came by on a belt from side to side, but that was the only difference. I only saw one once at Christmas time in Sears.

For those who were born after 1970 or so, department stores used to have huge, elaborate toy displays at Christmas, with huge train layouts, especially Lionel, and slot car sets, flying models by Cox and others that were ready-to-fly, aisles and aisles of all kinds of plastic models with many built examples to see on the display. To get it all set up, they had to take more than half of the shelves out of the toy department and shift them to neighboring areas. When it was all set up it took up a space more than double the standing toy department we went to ever week or so with our allowance. Sears was one of the largest, from downtown Chicago to the little Sears where I lived in the boondocks, they all did it every year, and in those days there were hundreds of large department stores across the US and Canada. In Canada, Simpson's and Eaton's competed for the largest displays, as did Macy's and Gimble's in New York. I used to ride my bicycle to see them building it for a week right after Thanksgiving. By New Year's Eve it had all gone back on the shelves and the shelves were back in place.