This week, I was reunited with one of my most fondly-remembered "rack toys" of my youth--the Amazing Spider-Man Rubber Band Gun! Oh, how I loved this thing. It is super-thin and sleek, and has a feature allowing it to hold several rubber bands, so you don't have to constantly reload.
That is, "automatic repeat action"!! The icing on the cake were the four stock-art targets included, which give you some of the best Spider-Man villains to shoot at: The Lizard, Kraven the Hunter, the ultimate Spider-Man foe, the Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus!
Manufactured by Gordy International, who I think made tons of these sort of things...I'm no expert on Rack Toys, but I certainly owned a ton of them in my childhood.
Also, I like how Captain America and the Hulk are added to the artwork on the side, because Marvel.
Really, the 1970's was the premiere decade for Marvel merchandising...sure, there is actually more out there now. In fact, I was pondering this recently: I will bet that you could decorate and supply an entire house with nothing but modern Marvel merchandise, from the wallpaper to the kitchen implements. This is cool, no doubt, but I prefer the Bronze-Age stuff, back in the days when I had a Spider-Man raincoat, wallet, and placemat to eat lunch on. I still have the wallet! I should feature that one soon.
And of course, the obligatory plain-backed packaging of the Rack Toy. These weren't made to be saved; they were impulse-buys, a way to silence a whining child when you were grocery-shopping.
I say this a lot, but it took a few years of biding my time on E-bay, as I've seen carded specimens go
for $135 to $200. You just have to wait for the right seller (who is actually interested in making a sale, versus starting an item's price at a ridiculous amount) and pounce when it happens! Now if I can just find a similarly-affordable version of the old Spider-Man Web Maker set!
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