There is a little group of these toy guns at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden collection, all of them from Polkhovskiy Maydan (Полховский Майдан), in Russia.  This one is the first I came across, but then I soon saw a second, and a third and a fourth, all of them different but in the same style, donated to the museum by artist and folk art collector Gerd Thielemann (1928-2017).

Polkhovskiy Maydan is a village of about 1500 people in the Nizhny Novgorod region (known as Gorky from 1932 to 1990). It is one of Russia’s main toy manufacturing regions, especially famous for its matryoshka or nesting dolls. The collection donated to the Dresden museum by Thielemann includes some lovely examples of matryoshka dolls from this village, as well as play crockery, toy hammers, bird-shaped whistles, tower-shaped stacking toys, Easter eggs, and lovely mushroom-shaped piggy banks.

I was not in the least familiar with toy guns and had never seen this type before, so initially I thought it might be a traditional local Russian design. However, I very soon found out that this is known as a pop gun (popgun, pop-gun – the Wikipedia page shows a rifle, but it works on the same principle) and it seems the mechanism is widely used the world over.

Several sources online state that the pop gun was invented in the US by Edward Lewis in 1887, and there is a little story about how he invented it. However, the patent from 1887 seems to relate to a spring gun with a trigger, rather than a pop gun. I found two earlier patents for improvements to toy pop guns similar to this (that is, with no trigger but rather a mechanism whereby you pull back the handle to fill the chamber with air and make the cork engage at the end of the barrel, and then push the handle to make the cork eject with a pop). One patent was filed by Carl Beer in 1876, for a pop gun with an added whistling effect, and the other by Elijah J B Whitaker in 1884, for one with an extra stopper to improve compression.

The shape and design of this gun were therefore around before 1876, at least in the US. It would be interesting to know how long the design has been used in the village of Polkhovskiy Maydan.

I am captivated by this toy and what it manages to embody. To me, it feels like a question mark, intentional or not, both in terms of shape and in terms of what makes a gun. I wonder what a modern-day child who likes playing with more realistic toy guns would make of this one. Would they recognise it as the same category of object? Might they not care about the decoration and simply use it as they use their other guns? Would they, like me, be surprised and delighted by it, or might their reaction be one of puzzlement? And why am I delighted by it?

I thought a bit about what makes this a gun. Is it the shape, or the popping sound the cork makes, or that you point it at someone or something? It feels a little like someone took the idea of a gun and dunked it in a vat of happiness, cosy familiarity, and all things light and breezy, turning it on its head and producing a new object altogether. The famous Flower Power photograph by Bernie Watson, taken in the US just five years earlier in 1967, popped into my head.

Until recently, the German toy manufacturer Gollnest & Kiesel (Goki) made at least two toy guns with the exact same mechanism and shape as this. However, the company website no longer lists them as part of their catalogue, so they may have been discontinued (you can still find images on other websites – see a plain one with blue and red stripes here, or a rainbow one here). I did find some smaller manufacturers still making them commercially, marketed to appeal to those looking for retro wooden toys. For instance, Majigg/Keycraft has a pop gun in a bright design that is described by retailers as a fun toy for improving young children’s motor skills. Some of the sites selling the Goki guns characterise them as starting guns for races – undoubtedly a reassuring and palatable idea for all of us. At this point, do we let out a sigh of relief, knowing that we have successfully navigated turbulent waters and are bringing up our children not as murderers, but as sports lovers?

I thought of all the ways we have come up with to shoot each other in the context of play – laser tag, paintball, video games, Nerf guns, water pistols. Are they simply good aids for playing an ‘enhanced’ version of catch? Are some more problematic than others?

It was interesting to play around with sets of variables in my head. Do I find there is a difference between shooting people in a video game with machine guns, and ‘shooting’ playmates with physical toy machine guns in role play situations? Do either of those forms of play make me uncomfortable? Do I find shooting easier to digest when it is made comical, or when it is essentially a removed ‘concept’ without any gore, like a life switch going on and off? Could pretending to kill or be killed in the context of play contribute to getting acquainted with our mortality?

Other toy guns I have seen are generally made either to look as much like the real thing as possible, or to at least look utilitarian, however plastic they may be – yes, the current commercial incarnations of this wooden pop gun are colourful, but the freehand decoration on the toy guns from Polkhovskiy Maydan transforms them entirely. I am reminded of those ladies’ guns that were designed back in the day to look dainty and fashionable – this is an actively pretty gun, crafted with love.  

Pondering about this, I then found a different gun in Gerd Thielemann’s collection from Polkhovskiy Maydan, which he acquired around 1990. Take a look at this toy, which lacks the floral decoration of the other guns and is painted neon pink. It is described as a gun but is also shaped like a short sword – it makes for a great, deliciously multipurpose design.   

These colourful guns made me think about the rampant gendering of motifs and toys we see regularly, and how the guns seem to happily exist in a world where a separate set of conventions are at play – those of regional craft traditions. My delight, I think, partly stems from this fact.   

I’d like a bouquet of flower guns in neon pink tones, please.