I' ve been doing some research on an old gun, and I thought you might find it interesting. I'm enclosing a promotional photo from as alesman's packet, I found it in a box with some old store stock Ibought several months ago. I did some digging, I haven't been able to turn up a lot of information, but this is what I found out so far.

It's called the "Neutron Ray", and it was made around 1957 by the Chief-E manufacturing company of Plainfield, New Jersey. It was a small business, mostly young children's toys. Looking at their '57 catalog, this appears to be the only space toy they made. It listed as a "...sound and smoke" cap pistol, from what I can guess, the cost was a real limiting factor, $8.95! It had a short run, only about 44 of these were ever produced. The gun didn't appear in their 1959 catalog, by 1962 the company was out of business. They obviously borrowed freely from other guns that were already on the market. But what a beautiful design, very classic styling. I can only guess what one of these would bring on
the market today.

(And by now, as you may have guessed, this is obviously a hoax. I created this gun in my iMac from 7 different classic guns: Buck Rogers Liquid Helium Water Pistol, the Atomic Pistol, the Tommy Ray, the Jet Junior, Rex Mars Planet Patrol, the Atomic Disintegrator, the Space Control gun and the Space Outlaw Gun.)