art direction, design + typography
From the reference box # 83
#83 - Daiya Space Colt. This item is a studio favourite - a working, "friction sparking with siren" tin ray gun!
The Space Colt was manufactured in Japan by Daiya during the late 50's and early 60's. It's 16cm (approx 6.5") in length and when the trigger is pulled it makes a weird noise as the friction sparks light-up the red lens panels.
According to ray gun enthusiast Justin Pinochot it has "uninspired design", which I was quite offended by until I looked at others on his wonderful website. He has a massive archive of Japanese ray guns and describes the as, "The stuff of fancy, toy ray guns are powered by pure imagination, by our almost unlimited capacity to wonder. Yet they represent other things as well. They are weapons intended to protect us from our deepest fears of the dark unknown, and they remind us of our vulnerability in the face of an endless and mysterious cosmos. Ray guns are testimony to the fact that we often conceive of even the majesty of space as a backdrop for our conflicts and struggles, and that we finally set foot on the moon only as the result of a deadly, war-like, competitive "race" between two superpower nations".
Our example has definitely had an eventful life and came without packaging, but this is the box it would have originally come in. Loving the image of the spaceman!
See more reference box goodies here.
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