Hello!

Correspondent Keith West sheds light on last Saturday’s CineSavant post about an ad for a ray gun toy, from 1954. His note spells it out in full clarity:

“Hi Glenn, have been enjoying your reviews and comments. The ‘Space Disintegrator Gun’ you mentioned shows up in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Artists and Models as a ‘Bat Lady’ toy for kids. Comics publisher Eddie Mayehoff demonstrates the rifle, and a miniature mushroom cloud issues from the muzzle of the gun. The visual effect of the detonation appears to be real footage of an atomic test. I have attached a frame grab of Mayehoff holding the ray gun — Keith West”

Well, that’s pretty sharp ray-gun spotting on Keith’s part, if you ask me. Artists and Models is a 1955 release, so the timing is ideal. I wonder if the original toy was from Hong Kong or perhaps Japan?  I Googled ‘vintage ray gun toy images’ but didn’t find this particular model, just small-caliber plastic hand blasters, from Buck Rogers on forward.

 

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Well, half of 2020 is almost gone, and we’re all hoping that the second half won’t be as awful as the first. It’s a slow news day, disc-wise, so I decided to round up a group of releases from the first six months of this year — the ones CineSavant was able to review — that I thought especially attractive to collectors. 2019 was a phenomenal year for fantasy, horror and sci-fi Blu-rays but the first half of 2020 is no slouch either. The box-tops below are also links to the CineSavant reviews.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson