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Zapped

In the post-war boom of the 1950s, Americans were done with looking back. We were over it. Coming off of the second World War we were trying to make sense of the awesome and devastating power of the atomic bomb and looking forward to a future where we wouldn't need to harness such awesome power against our enemies.

The fear of our new destructive capabilities came out in strange ways. The atomic age gave birth to nuclear energy sets for children, silver ray guns, and brightly colored metallic toys. It also birthed an era of science fiction that showed a country grappling with its own destructive nature.

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To be a child in the 1950s was to own a silver metallic ray gun. It was to zap and to be zapped. There were many versions of the silver metallic ray gun and most of them were manufactured by the J.&E. Stevens Company of Cromwell, Connecticut. The company went into business in the 1840s and sold iron cap guns before transitioning to something much more futuristic.

By the 1950s, cowboys were out and space age heroes from beyond the stars were in. J&E smartly switched their production line to items that looked like they came off an assembly line on Venus. There were four options for the would-be interstellar traveler, all of them featuring handles that looked like they may have been repurposed from a wild west six shooter but with barrels and bodies that were out of this world. Produced in shiny silver, they were must have items for anyone preparing to blast off.

Getting cosmic

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After all that talk about the J&E ray guns it's important to tell you that the ray gun this boy is holding wasn't manufactured by J&E. It's most likely the sparking ray gun manufactured by Cosmic. Aside from its clean lines and the bulbous body that's both aesthetically pleasing and cumbersome, the real seller for this ray gun is the fact that sparks literally fly when you pull the trigger.

Thanks to the Cosmic company's one and done ray gun it was possible to actually see the nuclear energy that was being expelled as you pretended to vaporize your pals in the back yard. Cosmic didn't outfit their ray gun with isotopes or tiny bits of plutonium to get this effect, just a small piece of flint, but that didn't stop other toy manufacturers from giving radiation poisoning to a generation.

All atomic everything

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If you were a child in the 1950s then you definitely had something that claimed to be "atomic." Not every toy that was atomic was nuclear powered but every toy that had a little bit of radiation in it was atomic. Released in 1951, the Gilbert No. U-238 Atomic Energy Lab was an educational set that showed young people how to take on the responsibilities of your average lab technician.

Containing a Geiger counter, electroscope, spinthariscope, a Wilson Cloud Chamber, instruction book, and radioisotopes this was less a toy and more of a trip to the E.R. It's not entirely clear if any of the indoor kids who played with the Gilbert No. U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (that name just rolls right off the tongue) ever developed radiation poisoning, but this didn't remain on the market for long.

Freak out with a moonage daydream

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All of these toys, from the relatively harmless ray guns to the semi-educational nuclear powered kits of the 1950s were all born from the same concept - the future. With war all but eradicated it was time to take the next step into human evolution and that meant traveling to the stars even if we weren't sure how to get there. Toy manufactures imagined various robots, aliens, and model kits that built up the possibilities of interstellar travel to impossible levels of cool. Even if you get to go to space you'll never get to ride in a Moon Rocket with a powder blue periscope. You'll never be able to ride in a space tank. You'll never actually get to travel to the future.

That's not to say that the real space age that began in the '60s was any less exciting than what we imagined in the '50s. There were no aliens, no giant robots, but a sense of curiosity blossomed. Maybe our imagined atomic age is still out there, we just have to find it.

Blast off

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The space age toys of the 1950s may have promised young people a future that was out of reach. There would be no rocket rides, no giant robots to obey our every command, and certainly no ray guns. They did, however, teach young people to look to the future and to thirst for things not yet imagined. While the adults of the world were reckoning with the power of nuclear energy, young people were thinking about how to harness that same raw power into something exciting and bright, even if it was just all in their heads.

A Young Boy Shows Off His Ray Gun, Around The 1950s

Zapped

Getting cosmic

All atomic everything

Freak out with a moonage daydream

Blast off