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A cap gun is a toy gun that creates a loud sound simulating a gunshot and a puff of smoke when the trigger is pulled. Cap guns were originally made of cast iron, but after World War II were made of zinc alloy, and most newer models are made of plastic. Cap guns get their name from the small discs of shock-sensitive explosive compounds (roughly in diameter) that provide the noise and smoke, effectively the same as the separate percussion cap primers used in real firearms of the mid to late 1800s, although invariably smaller and made from cheap plastic or paper rather than soft metal. Some are arranged in plastic rings of eight or twelve. There are also single caps, roll caps (of 50 to 500), and disk caps, all of which are actually extremely small versions of percussion fireworks. Armstrong's mixture is often used today as the explosive, but previously the tiny powder charge was a simple mixture of potassium perchlorate, sulfur and antimony sulfide sandwiched between two paper layers which hold in the gases long enough to give a sound report when the cap is struck. ==History== Cap guns first appeared following the end of the American Civil War in the mid-1860s, when firearms companies experimented with toy guns in order to stay in business.〔http://www.collectorsweekly.com/toys/cap-guns〕 Cap guns became especially popular when the heroes of cinema and television rode through the West ridding the territories of villains. Many cap guns were named after or endorsed by leading matinee idols like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Tonto, Dale Evans, Marshal Matt Dillon, or any of countless others. The "Golden Age" of cap guns was roughly a 20-year period following World War II when television became popular and such companies as Nichols, Hubley, Kenton, Kilgore, Wyandotte, Classy, Mattel, Actoy, Esquire, George Schmidt, and Stevens made millions of cap guns in various versions. While many had their names patterned after a hero or heroine, many cap guns also were named with western-sounding names, like: "Stallion 45", "Pony", "Mustang", "Pioneer", "Cowboy", "Texan", "Colt 45", "Rodeo", and such. Children all over the world emulated their heroes and collected and played with these toy guns. However, when the Western television shows began to fade away and the heroes retired, the popularity of the tie-in toy guns also diminished and eventually all of the famous cap gun manufacturers either sold out to other toy companies or started manufacturing other types of toys. There were many types of cap guns, including guns from small Derringers, to larger rifles, and even working miniatures of most of them. One of the last famous ones to sell widely was a toy rifle named after the television show, ''The Rifleman'', which aired from 1958 through early 1963. There were other shows that lasted longer, such as Gunsmoke (which had 20 seasons lasting through 1975) but those did not have as much 'kid-appeal' as the earlier shows, and the sales of toy cap guns began to decline. The pistols generally were in 3 styles, the semi-automatic, the revolver (that actually had a revolving cylinder carrying a disk of caps) and the mock-revolver that looked like a regular revolver, but opened to load a roll of caps. Almost all of the early models used either roll caps or circular disks of caps, but in 1950 Nichols Industries came out with a large model called the Stallion 45, which had a revolving cylinder into which individual bullets were loaded, which each had two parts. The circular cap was placed into the 2-piece bullet and then when the gun was loaded and fired, it seemed more realistic. Eventually several companies used this idea and a few years later Nichols invented a plastic bullet that was snapped into a hollowed-out version of the regular 2-piece bullet with a compression spring inside. When the gun was fired, the spring pressure "shot" the plastic pellet out of the end of the barrel. Eventually Mattel also came out with a similar model called "Shootin' Shells." Mattel produced an automatic firing cap weapon styled after the Thompson submachine gun. Pulling back on a slide, which simulated the charging handle of the real Thompson, prepared the gun for firing by tensioning a spring. When the trigger was pulled the spring power would drive the mechanism, firing a series of up to ten caps from a sprocket-fed roll. It was made initially for a Dick Tracy line of toys, then camouflaged for a Green Beret Guerilla Fighter line of weapons, then restyled again as a tie-in with the ''Planet of the Apes'' franchise. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「cap gun」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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