Ray Gun

by Eugene W. Metcalf & Frank Maresca

Description by OLDIES.com:

Toy ray guns conjure a wealth of meanings and associations. Their outlandish shapes and fanciful colors evoke fond childhood memories of Buck Rogers and Captain Video, of backyard spaceships that blasted off for high adventure in the endless reaches of space. The stuff of fancy, toy ray guns are powered by pure imagination, by our almost unlimited capacity to wonder. Yet they represent other things as well. They are weapons intended to protect us from our deepest fears of the dark unknown, and they remind us of our vulnerability in the face of an endless and mysterious cosmos. Ray guns are testimony to the fact that we often imagine even the majesty of space as a backdrop for our conflicts and struggles, and that humankind finally set foot on the moon only as the result of a competitive, war-like "race" between two superpower nations. From the exuberant Art Deco disintegrator pistols of the 1930s, to the streamlined tin-litho sparkers of the 1950s and the darkly post-apocalyptic nitro-blasters of today, toy ray guns express and represent our dreams, fears, and fantasies.