Still Writing About Boys' Toys

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Last week's column got me to thinking about other toys of our past. One I remember well was the Fanner 50 cap gun. We don't see many cap guns these days - at least not the type we had back when we were kids. Most of the kids in my (pre-Lee) days had at least one, many with two in fancy holsters. We thought nothing about running around the neighborhood shooting at each other - a procedure which today might involve Police response with real guns.

I don't know at what period of my life I quit playing with them and took up shooting real guns, but I am sure my familiarity with the cap guns of my youth greatly influenced my future conduct. I fired expert in the Air Force the first time I shot the Smith and Wesson .38 Combat Masterpiece during my aircrew survival, and never fired any score less than expert during my 20 years service.

Do any of you have your own memories of cap guns? If so I wish you would share them with your classmates.

The Wayback Machine

The Fanner 50 Cap Gun

Cap guns first appeared in the mid-1860s, following the end of the Civil War, when some firearms companies began making toy guns to help compensate for the lost military contracts of the war years. However, it was the movies and television of the 1940s through the 1960s that ushered in the Golden Age of cap guns. Silver screen cowboys Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry and John Wayne, along with fictional range riders like the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid and Marshal Matt Dillon, stirred our imaginations. Toy companies like Mattel, Hubley, Halco, Nichols—even Britain’s Lone Star Toys—kept us properly armed so we could tame our neighborhood frontiers. Some cap guns bore the names of our cowboy heroes and heroines, like Richard Boone’s “Paladin” or Gail Davis’ “Annie Oakley,” while others had Western monikers like the Texan, Mustang, Pioneer, Colt 45 or Stallion 45.

These die-cast metal cap guns were so popular in those bygone days that during one year in the early 1950s, the Hubley Toy Company stated in February of that year, they had sold out all the cap pistols they could produce until the following year! Another, Nichols Industries, claimed it was producing one of its toy derringers every two seconds and could only fill about two thirds of its orders!

Arguably the most popular and best remembered by anyone who grew up blazing away with those perforated rolls of paper ammo was Mattel’s Fanner-50 series (the 50 designation is for the 50-shot rolls of paper caps). The series was introduced in 1957 by Mattel. There were many different Fanner-50s, some with revolving cylinders, although most did not have that added authentic feature. Fanner-50s lasted until around 1975, coinciding with the cancellation of the last TV Western, Gunsmoke, and by the mid-1980s, most of the toy cap gun companies had either ceased toy gun production, or were gone.

Fanner-50s included models like the Ramrod, Cowboy, Gunfighter, a Lone Ranger double holster set, Chuck Connor’s Cowboy in Africa double-holster set, and even 1968’s Planet of the Apes Fanner-50. Mattel produced unique Fanner-50s like the swivel shot trick holster, smoking cap pistol; a Shootin’ Shell 45 model that used the Greenie Stik-M-Caps; and the Bullet Loading Fanner-50. This last model took non-firing metal play cartridges. You stuck caps on the backs of each one, which produced smoke when fired. As you can see, there were too many models to list them all here.

Do any of you have any fond memories of cap guns you had while you were growing up? If so, share them with us.

For my female friends out there. Send me the name of one of your most memorable childhood toys and I will do some research on it and share it with the rest of our readers. Here's your chance

Last Week's Questions, Answers, 

And Comments

Johnny Roberts, LHS '66, "Hope you are recovering and feeling better, Tommy. I had the electric football game. It was really cool and I do remember playing with it a lot (thinking of you, Hub). Sometime later, somebody stepped on the board and bent it beyond repair."

Jim Bannister, LHS ‘66, "I had one of the early electric football games. It had all metal players including the runners. The only way to control the speed (vibration) was to put your finger on the field. A rolled up wisp of cotton was the ball. I also had a 1950's vintage Santa Fe Streamliner electric train set. These and other treasures, a shoe box full of baseball cards, a box of arrow heads and other stuff, were given or thrown away by my folks when I went in the Navy."

Linda Kinkle Cianci, LHS ‘66, "I thought some would enjoy seeing how Mike's cousin restored a VW van."