Flash Gordon "Signal Pistol" Ray Gun (Louis Marx & Co., 1935)....

Description

Flash Gordon "Signal Pistol" Ray Gun (Louis Marx & Co., 1935). Issued just one year after Alex Raymond's space opera rocketed into Sunday papers, Marx's pressed-steel Signal Pistol captured the cliff-hanger thrill of Flash's interplanetary skirmishes decades before laser blasters became a sci-fi staple. A squeeze of the trigger still actuates the internal striker, ready to "zap" Ming's minions. The sleek deco body retains its full silhouette-flared muzzle, finned barrel, and the chrome crest-while deep field-use scratches, scattered paint chips, and a few shallow dings document a lifetime of backyard adventures; the crest shows gentle denting and era-typical tarnish, but its decal remains easily legible.

Even with its well-earned age, the Signal Pistol stands among the earliest mass-market ray guns and the first licensed Flash Gordon toy, predating the Buck Rogers XZ-38 by months and laying the groundwork for every spring-loaded blaster that followed. For collectors of pre-war tin toys or Golden Age comic exotica, this survivor delivers authentic 1930s space-race charisma, proving that long before lightsabers and plasma rifles, one steel spark pistol could ignite the imagination of a generation hurtling toward the stars.

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