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    The Fallout franchise is a post-apocalyptic series of role-playing and tactics games originally developed by Black Isle, and most recently, Bethesda Softworks and Obsidian Entertainment.

    You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

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    ahoodedfigure

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    Edited By ahoodedfigure

    The Red Ryder BB Gun




    The Plymouth Iron Windmill Company in Plymouth, Michigan had been making farm windmills for years when in 1886, the company decided to include a promotional item with purchase: an air-powered rifle.  Later, when the company was about to close down due to slow sales, they noticed that the popularity of the air rifles they were giving away greatly exceeded the popularity of their main product. The board decided to switch to producing air rifles for sale.  "Daisy" was youthful, polite slang for something extraordinary, so soon thereafter the company took on the name Daisy Manufacturing Company in 1895.

    Red Ryder's debut issue
    Red Ryder's debut issue
    Production continued through the Great Depression, when sales began to slump.  New, aggressive marketing campaigns in the 1930's were employed to maintain interest, and out of these strategies came a tie-in with comic book hero Red Ryder which was to strongly increase interest: The Red Ryder BB Gun.  A few years afterward, the company's production was converted to help in the war against the Axis Powers, but demand for the rifle remained strong.

    The Red Ryder BB Gun became the most memorable promotion in Daisy Corporation's long history, and was used as a historical detail by writer Jean Shepherd, whose partly fictional In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories were mined for his screenplay for the film A Christmas Story

    The rifle was later included in the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland, a game which also includes Red Ryder himself in a small, symbolic role.  The gun is one of the game's most deadly weapons.

    In the Fallout series, the rifle's symbolic encapsulation of a straight-arrow America closely matches the game's golly-gee,1950's-style ironic optimism. So while the rifle's presence references Fallout's spiritual predecessor Wasteland, it also helps add to Fallout's tone of shattered idealism.  Like the real weapon, the Fallout version requires BBs (short for ball-bearings) as ammunition, and could carry 100 rounds at a time.  In the first Fallout, the Red Ryder BB Gun comes in two editions, the first and most common edition is relatively useless for most combat encounters, doing very little damage.  The hard-to-find Limited Edition is dramatically more effective, though much more likely to shoot your eye out.

    In all its glory
    In all its glory




























    The above is, hopefully, my final draft.  I imagine others can add to it or whatever, but I'm really liking these shorter, more concise entries.  I don't mind making them any more now that the points have been adjusted! :)
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    ahoodedfigure

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    #1  Edited By ahoodedfigure

    The Red Ryder BB Gun




    The Plymouth Iron Windmill Company in Plymouth, Michigan had been making farm windmills for years when in 1886, the company decided to include a promotional item with purchase: an air-powered rifle.  Later, when the company was about to close down due to slow sales, they noticed that the popularity of the air rifles they were giving away greatly exceeded the popularity of their main product. The board decided to switch to producing air rifles for sale.  "Daisy" was youthful, polite slang for something extraordinary, so soon thereafter the company took on the name Daisy Manufacturing Company in 1895.

    Red Ryder's debut issue
    Red Ryder's debut issue
    Production continued through the Great Depression, when sales began to slump.  New, aggressive marketing campaigns in the 1930's were employed to maintain interest, and out of these strategies came a tie-in with comic book hero Red Ryder which was to strongly increase interest: The Red Ryder BB Gun.  A few years afterward, the company's production was converted to help in the war against the Axis Powers, but demand for the rifle remained strong.

    The Red Ryder BB Gun became the most memorable promotion in Daisy Corporation's long history, and was used as a historical detail by writer Jean Shepherd, whose partly fictional In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories were mined for his screenplay for the film A Christmas Story

    The rifle was later included in the post-apocalyptic game Wasteland, a game which also includes Red Ryder himself in a small, symbolic role.  The gun is one of the game's most deadly weapons.

    In the Fallout series, the rifle's symbolic encapsulation of a straight-arrow America closely matches the game's golly-gee,1950's-style ironic optimism. So while the rifle's presence references Fallout's spiritual predecessor Wasteland, it also helps add to Fallout's tone of shattered idealism.  Like the real weapon, the Fallout version requires BBs (short for ball-bearings) as ammunition, and could carry 100 rounds at a time.  In the first Fallout, the Red Ryder BB Gun comes in two editions, the first and most common edition is relatively useless for most combat encounters, doing very little damage.  The hard-to-find Limited Edition is dramatically more effective, though much more likely to shoot your eye out.

    In all its glory
    In all its glory




























    The above is, hopefully, my final draft.  I imagine others can add to it or whatever, but I'm really liking these shorter, more concise entries.  I don't mind making them any more now that the points have been adjusted! :)
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    Claude

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    #2  Edited By Claude

    That was a great write up, love history. I remember my first BB Gun, it shot pellets as well. On Christmas Day I took it outside and shot my sister's Big Wheel and the gun was taken from me for a month.

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    brukaoru

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    #3  Edited By brukaoru

    Great write up and great images too. Quite a perfect time to write up this article! Can't wait to watch marathons of A Christmas Story, it's become a tradition over the years. :D

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    zitosilva

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    #4  Edited By zitosilva

    Cool, very interesting and well written. I never had a BB Gun myself, and I never wished for a poney. Which makes me think that I had a really lousy childhood.

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    ahoodedfigure

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    #5  Edited By ahoodedfigure

    You know Claude, mine shot pellets too.  Pellets are sort of the forgotten stepchild of BBs, but they were a lot more interesting to me :)  Better impact, but lest likely to embed themselves.  One of the last times I fired my hand-cranked air pistol it accidentally went off in my room and shot a BB into the wall, where there was a little hole until the day I moved out :)  Glad I wasn't staring down the end of the barrel, but I think it taught me to respect firearms pretty well, which I imagine is the goal behind these things.

    Oh, yeah!  I forgot about those A Christmas Story marathons.  TBS, isn't it?  I mean, I probably couldn't watch that more than twice, but I think I might buy the DVD some day so I can show it off to people who've never even heard of the movie before :)

    It's funny, Zitosilva, that our childhood is often now about what sorts of toys we got.  I wonder if it was always that way.

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    deactivated-5c5cdba6e0b96

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    Christmas Story! Haha for anyone that has seen the movie that gun plays a big part, my favorite Christmas movie of all time, along with the grinch, good shit man.

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    xymox

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    #7  Edited By xymox

    Heh. I remember my first BB gun. Good times. 

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