The Guns of Wham-O, Hamilton Dueling Pistol, PowerMaster Rifle, PowerMaster Pistol.Have you ever hea
The Guns of Wham-O, Hamilton Dueling Pistol, PowerMaster Rifle, PowerMaster Pistol.Have you ever heard of the company called Wham-O (or Wamo! as it was called in the 50’s), what is their legacy? For starters; the frisbee, the hackey sack, the hula hoop, and the superball. However few know that in the late 1950's Wham-O dabbled in the firearms market. While they did make dart guns, air guns, crossbows, and cap guns they decided to create a few youth model .22 lr firearms.First was the Wham-O Hamilton Dueling pistol, modeled after Alexander Hamilton’s famous dueling pistols. While more toy than gun, with crude sights and a toy like appearence it was an actual single shot breachloading .22 firearm. Only 900 were produced.Then there was the Wham-O Powermaster Rifle. Crude and toylike it was modeled after the Tommy Gun. It was a single shot .22 rifle but when fired the bolt would lock back, allowing the user to load another round without retracting the bolt. I can’t find specific numbers but few of these were made.Finally there was the Wham-O Powermaster Pistol. A .22 single shot like the other firearms, this gun is more like an actual gun than the others. It was well machined, accurate, and sported real sights. Again I can’t find specific production figures but not many were made.Unfortunatly these guns were not very popular. The fusion between toy and gun was not a good mix, people either wanted a toy or a gun, not a cheap crude mixture of both. The Hamilton Pistol and PowerMaster Rifle designs would be scraped. The PowerMaster pistol design would be sold to Daisy Air Rifle Company, who converted it into an air pistol. -- source link
#guns#firearms#toys#pistols#rifles#wham-o#antiques#vintage#1950's