I had a lot of cap guns growing up. I had a lot of squirt guns, too. I even had a couple of camera guns (from various spy playsets). But the best guns of all were the Star Trek Tracer Guns.
Sure, they looked nothing like the phasers from the show and shot little plastic disks instead of coherent light beams. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that you could load these babies up with a ton of ammo and go on insane rampages against anything: parents, siblings, friends, pets; nothing was spared getting shot by these things. And, unlike cap guns and squirt guns, you could generally use these indoors without getting in trouble from Mom. There was also a rifle version of the gun, but we never had one. We did have about six of the pistols, though.
We discovered that the size of the ammo was very close to the size of a penny, so we attempted to load up with those instead. It worked, but the penny would only go about two or three inches: the firing mechanism was just too flimsy to fling coins. We had so much ammo that I would imagine you’d still find some deep in the cushions of my parents’ couch.
I remember getting hit in the eyeball with one of the disks, and having it hurt like hell. Sometimes, brothers are mean mean bastards.
My lifelong love of Star Trek was greatly increased by these toys, despite their lack of resemblance to anything on that show.
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Responses to “Toys I Wish I Still Had #6: The Star Trek Tracer Gun”
[...] Spandex Justice’s “Toys I Wish I Still Had” series rules. This idea should become a meme. Check out The Star Trek Tracer Gun. I remember being a kid and seeing those tracer discs in every nook and cranny of every playground, park and backyard. [...]
January 28th, 2006 at 8:27 pm |
[...] http://spandexjustice.com/2006/01/26/68 [...]
June 25th, 2007 at 8:53 am |
[...] the Star Trek Tracer gun. Shoot little plastic discs and even pennies. From: Spandex Justice.com Digg This [?] Share This Sphere: Related [...]
September 9th, 2007 at 6:36 am |
I had one of these when I was a kid! It met it’s demise when the neighborhood bully chased us away from our playground then broke all our toys… asshole!
May 15th, 2008 at 10:23 am |
I found one of the tracer gun disks while I was retrieving a coin target while metal detecting in a park (you find quite a bit of non-metallic minutae in your retrieval holes, things like marbles, pipe stems, etc…). I knew what it was right off the bat as I had one too, brought back the memories. It was cool finding your page with the shots of it!
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:00 pm |
What are you, my freakin’ brother or something? Did we somehow have all the same toys?
I’ve recently found originals of the SSPs I’ve had and I’ve bought some Sizzlers as well.
We still have a couple of the original Star Trek tracer guns.
Did you ever notice that you could shoot the tracer guns at your brother in a mirror and it
would perfectly richochet and hit him?
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm |
I had a Star Trek tracer gun when i was a kid. LOVED IT!! It was my favorite gun toy. Those little plastic discs were all over the house and yard. As i grew up and the toy was long gone, i would still occasionally find those little plastic discs laying around, long since forgotten, embedded in time, buried in a dirt mound or underneath an old carpet or piece of furniture. I wish i could revisit those days of being a kid running around with it beaming people, pets, GI Joe, whatever was in my sights. Those discs seemed to travel a good distance when you’re a kid. I used to try to cram as many of those discs as i could in the little chamber, sometimes too many. Me and my brother would sometimes dare the other to press the barrel right against our hand, body-part, or temple and fire it to see if it hurt. Of course it stung a little bit. This toy was a vital part of my childhood and i have always remembered it. Just seeing the packaging brings back so many memories…
March 15th, 2009 at 4:31 pm |
I’m trying to get one. I had one as a kid but it went missing. Desperately trying to search for one :-(
March 30th, 2009 at 3:12 pm |
[...] From: Spandex Justice.com [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 3:14 am |
I am looking for an old toy, maybe someone here can help me. It was a tracing tool. It was a simple contraption, with a pencil at one end, they usually showed some kid tracing his coloring books onto blank paper, in the commercials. I wish I had one! I am a seamstress now and often create patterns,, how easy it would be to make alterations by tracing my patterns out just a bit or alot bigger if I could get my hands on one of these! I think it was called Magic Trace or something like that,, i have done a web search and am coming up empty,, maybe I don’t have the right name for it.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:59 am |