Shoot Up The Screen, Literally!

The early days of comics were littered with ads for unconventional toys, one of which was the Auto-Magic Picture Gun made in 1939. Now don't you worry parents, this wasn't a genuine gun capable of shooting physical projectiles, but a small film projector that could be used on any flat surface. Made available from Stephens Products Co as well as Allen Sales Co., this toy was designed to operate like a real gun, along with four film strips that contained up to 36 images each. Later versions of this would feature seven film strips and a special Auto-Magic Theater that you could use to show them with if you didn't happen do have any flat surfaces in your house, plus it was advertised as being "wonderful for shut-ins" which is terribly egregious if your company was trying to glamorize a child staying inside all day. The actual films varied from being educational or historic, while others were of copyright free original characters like Pilot Jerry and slightly original animal funnies plus Popeye, although some of them had clearly racist caricatures on the outside wrapper, so if the black crows from Dumbo didn't offend you then you might be okay. Speaking of Disney, they worked out a deal to show some of their characters called the Disneyland Picture Gun which is very shattering if you think Walt Disney was endorsing guns of any kind, except of course for the one that killed Bambi's mother. Disney couldn't pass up the opportunity to add this to their insane catalog of Davy Crockett swag that was already responsible for the pointless deaths of innocent racoons just to make those stupid hats that kids probably threw out after a year of getting them. Another version of this gun was the Space Viewer which looked just like the regular ones except it had a rocket insignia on the side. The Auto-Magic gun usually sold for about $2.95, although in most cases you had to supply your own bulbs and batteries for the darn thing which were apparently available at certain dealers. Why of all things in the world the manufacturers thought that having the projector look like a modern-day handgun of all things makes you really question the ethics from WWII on up to the mid-50s about having kids finding the idea of firearms as a source of mirth for screening Donald Duck cartoons just makes you shake your head.

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