Rayguns of Edison Giacattoli

Sean Michael Ragan takes us on a tour of his obsession with the toy ray-guns of Edison Giacattoli, which apparently inspired some of the prop guns in Firefly.

On the back of the box were pictures of the other guns in the TH3 line. They all looked pretty cool, but the "Super Thur LR," shown above, was by far the most drool-inducing. Alas, as every collector knows, there's always One That Got Away, and, in the five or so years I've been collecting EG ray guns, I've never even seen any evidence that a Super Thur LR was ever manufactured or sold. I've had a number of automatic searches running for years now without so much as a glimmer. If anyone out there has one, I'm prepared to pay handsomely for it. Please contact me.

The ray guns of Edison Giacattoli (Thanks, Sean Michael!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

That should be “Giocattoli” (means “Toys” in Italian) and not “Giacattoli”. And BTW I used to have the gun in the pic as a kid. It was wonderful!
Pantograph

I have a sneaky suspicion that these items are in fact fake. If you have proof that these produce actual brightly colored death rays, then I might be interested.
License Farm

The One That Got Away immediately put me in mind of my toy robot collection. I was just talking to old classmates last night about my wish for an Omnibot (and the later Omnibot 2000, c. 1986). Not quite as rare, I grant you, but certainly outside of my disposable income.
error404

Oh I remember them.

I always liked the brass knuckles style pistol grip a lot better then the actual gun.
Anonymous

Edison Giacattoli has some great designs. Back when my friends and I were in our 20s we all had a few. I STILL find those little yellow bullets hidden in my stuff and I’ve moved several times since then.
angrydroid

Cool! I had the ZV-263. My parents bought it for me when they dragged my 12-year-old self to Paris. I lost the rubber bullets pretty quickly but I remember it had a little spring-loaded clip magazine they loaded into. I have absolutely no idea what happened to it but it was the envy of all my kid-friends.
dculberson

So Ragan likes ray guns!u
toyg

Er, it’s actually “giocattoli”, as you can see from the original url “edisongiocattoli.it”. It means “toys” in Italian, so hey, BB + languages = FAIL :)
archanoid

Ray guns are not just the future.
Anonymous

When I was a kid a played with a Super Thur LR, this guns were made in Italy in the 80s, and sold in Europe, at least in France and Andorra. It was a expensive toy, so.. Xmas present toy :-)