Museum Minute: The Buck Rogers Toy Gun, Oklahoma

Serials featuring Buck Rogers were prolific in movie theaters in the 1930s and he quickly became one of the most popular children's characters. Replica toys of his intergalactic weapons became very popular, including this disintegrater pistol manufactured by Daisy.

Curator Jason Schubert of the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum discusses unique artifacts from the Museum's collection in this Museum Minute series. Students at Northeast Technology Center in Claremore, Oklahoma, collaborated with the Museum to explore both the job of curating at a museum and the background stories of museum objects.

Television Narrator (00:00): In the year in 1987, NASA launched the last of America's deep space probes. Aboard this compact star ship, a lone astronaut Captain William Buck Rogers was to experience cosmic forces beyond all comprehension. In a freak mishap, his life support systems were frozen by temperatures beyond imagination. Ranger 3 was blown out of its planned trajectory into an orbit 1000 times more vast. An orbit which was to return Buck Rogers to Earth 500 years later.

Jason Schubert (00:48): The year is 1934 and America's favorite space hero is Buck Rogers. Back in those days, movies were for a nickel and you'd go in whenever you came in and you might catch the movie in the middle, you might wait until it's over and then you'd watch the front of the movie until you come to the point where you started. Or you just spend all day in the movie theater. This was depending upon what your parents were doing in town and what they let you do.

Jason Schubert (01:24): Now often between feature films, there would be news reels, there would also be what we call serials. These short serials would be part of a longer episode that you would catch a few minutes of and one of the greatest of course, was Buck Rogers.

Jason Schubert (01:47): Now, since every little boy wanted to be like Buck Rogers, Daisy Manufacturing, or the Daisy Air Gun Company, started making the Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol in several models. The first one here in the bright brass colored, it is actually metal. These things were very tough, well-made toys and when you pulled the trigger on the disintegrator, the little window right there starts sparkling and crackling because that little nut there on the top unscrews and it takes a flint kind of like in a Zippo lighter of the day. So you put that flint in there, you pull the trigger, spark start flying. And before you know it you're fighting the forces of Ming the Merciless.

Jason Schubert (02:55): Daisy manufactured these different models from 1934 until 1946. That shows you just how long Buck Rogers was popular. As some of us know, namely folks in my generation know about the 1978 remake of Buck Rogers with Gil Gerard and Erin Gray, but it teaches us to appreciate the past and learn a little bit, go back and see the original Buck Rogers. So come on down to the J.M. Davis Museum, check out our extensive line of mini toy guns, as well as the real firearms and see our Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol. I'm Jason Schubert and this is Museum Minute.

Asset ID: 2022.01.03
Themes: Television, science fiction, firearms, history, industry, toys, childhood, space, popular culture, museums, movies, heroes, villains, news, serials, television, 1930s
Date recorded: 2018
Length of recording: 03:59m
File Type: Video
Related traveling exhibition: The Way We Worked
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Northeast Tech EAST Students, in collaboration with J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum, Claremore, Oklahoma
More information: https://museumonmainstreet.org/blog-node/students-explore-museum-work-oklahoma