Nu-Age Smoke Ring gun

Smoke-Ring gun, NU-AGE, USA,

1950's

This is another one of the best space designs around - especially if you were a kid playing Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon in the 50ies. Principle is quite simple - put a special match in the barel (yes kids, do play with fire !) pull the trigger and a rubber membrane would make perfect smoke rings coming out of the nozzle of the gun.

Smoke-Ring gun (chamber open),
NU-AGE, USA,1950's

(Smoke Ring gun pellets - archive pic.)

With the age, the rubber membrane tends to fall to pieces (a problem also known to collectors of fountain pens ;)) Even so, this piece is timeless - and reflects the idea of the 50ies that space exploration would not  always be pacific... Happilly, a decade or so later, NASA decided that the real Apollo missions did not need to carry guns to the moon!