http://www.daisy.com/breeze_archives.html?breeze_article=redryder2

The Story of the Daisy Red Ryder Part II - The Return of the Christmas Dream
According to Orin Ribar, former service manager for Daisy, by 1940, Daisy was producing the #111, model 40 Red Ryder. It had a blued finish, copper plated barrel band and forearm band, a wood stock and forearm, a ring and staple with a leather thong, and a hot stamp on the stock. Production was halted in 1942 to support the war effort, but when the Red Ryder went back into production in the mid-'40s, it was so popular that mail addressed simply to "The Red Ryder Company" got to Daisy in Plymouth.

In 1946, the gun was produced with barrel and forearm bands that were blued like the rest of the gun and was equipped with regular iron sights. In 1951, the company switched to plastic stocks and forearms, although a few guns were produced with combinations of plastic and wood.

In 1954, the model 94 Red Ryder was introduced with a painted finish, a combination open sight/peep sight, molded hot stamp on the plastic stock, a silkscreen design on the receiver, and a dummy diecast metal hammer at the end of the stock. This model still retained the secondary barrel to pour BBs in. In 1958, the name Red Ryder was dropped, but the identical gun was produced as the Model 94 Western Carbine.

In 1972, as the result of a nostalgia boom around the country, Red Ryder reappeared on Daisy guns. The new Red Ryder model was called the 1938, and was designed to closely resemble the original "Red." It had a painted finish, wood stock and forearm, regular iron sights, a Red Ryder hotstamp on the wood, ring and staple with leather thong, and the second barrel underneath.

In 1979, all Daisy's lever action guns were changed to have non-removable shot tubes with a plastic plug for the end of the barrel/sight. All trigger systems were fitted with crossbolt safeties.

In 1983, the film, A Christmas Story, based on Jean's Shepherd's wonderful book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, came out. It tells the story of a young boy who wanted for Christmas "a Red Ryder range model carbine with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time."

It's been said that life imitates art, and that's certainly true of A Christmas Story. When Shepherd consulted with folks at Daisy about the film, they told him that he had not remembered correctly, that he had confused the Red Ryder and the model 107 Buck Jones, which had the compass and sundial.

Shepherd insisted he was right. So Daisy made a sample for him and then decided to actually produce Red Ryder air rifles with the compass and sundial in 1983 and 1984. That model of the Red Ryder was called "A Christmas Dream."

This year, Daisy will be issuing a 20th Anniversary Christmas Dream Red Ryder, an exact replica of the gun that was made in 1983. It will have a compass in the stock and a sundial and the words "A Christmas Dream" laser engraved in the wood. It will be available through the Daisy Museum in Rogers, Arkansas. To order the 20th Anniversary Christmas Dream Red Ryder, visit the museum online at www.daisymuseum.com; visit the museum in person at 114 South 1st Street, Rogers, Arkansas; email info@daisymuseum.com, or phone (479) 986-6873.





http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2004/12/13/Features/is.There.No.End.To.The.Irrational.Prejudice.Against.Red.Ryder.And.His.Peacemaker-828347.shtml

'Is there no end to the irrational prejudice against Red Ryder and his peacemaker?'

Second only to "It's A Wonderful Life" on TV Guide's list of the greatest holiday films of all time, "A Christmas Story"(1983) is an amalgam of warm-heartedly cynical vignettes hung on the through line of nine-year-old Ralphie Parker's quest for a Red Ryder airgun.

Based on the stories and monologues of late radio personality and Hammond, Ind. native Jean Shepherd (catalogued in his best-selling book "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"), "A Christmas Story" looks at Depression-era Midwestern Americana with satire biting at the heels of its sentimentality. 

The low budget movie, narrated by Shepherd, went from a modest hit (MGM spent more time and money producing and promoting the box office bomb "Yentl" that year) to a contemporary classic, thanks to repeated television broadcasts. 

Basic cable's Turner Broadcasting Station annually telecasts "A Christmas Story" 24-hour marathon in late December. According to Variety magazine, 38.4 million people - one-sixth of the United States - regularly tune in to watch mothers, teachers and even Santa Claus warn BB gun happy Ralphie not to shoot his eye out.

In an interview with editorial commentator Alan Colmes, Shepherd admitted his original short story, "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails The Cleveland Street Kid," was a war parable - not an allegory for American Christmas capitalism. 

Nonetheless - across multiple generations and religious creeds - few lines of dialogue are as synonymous with the holidays as "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" 

What continues to dramatically change, however, are the social contexts through which Red Ryders - introduced by the Daisy Airgun corporation in 1940 - were once considered wholly appropriate Christmas presents.

"The BB gun is a symbol representing 'that one thing' we all wanted for Christmas and were afraid we wouldn't get, whether it was a gun, a Barbie doll or a toy crane," said Jim Clavin, creator and webmaster of flicklives.com, dedicated to Shepherd's work and legacy.

"BB guns, air rifles and six-shooters were the ultimate Christmas gifts for kids in [the 1940s and '50s], in part due to the popularity of westerns on television. Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger and Cisco Kid were Saturday morning addictions for us as kids.

"It was a different society back then," Clavin continued. "Parents taught their kids that airguns were not to point at one another. They taught us to respect what might happen if [airguns] were used incorrectly. 

"Respect with kids today has 'faded into the sunset' since it is not stressed enough in the home, and the entertainment industry has made it irrelevant [through] so many of the television shows, movies and music lyrics."

John Ford, co-curator of the Rogers Daisy Airgun Museum in Rogers, Ark., said many mothers and fathers in the 1940s and '50s had fewer reservations about giving their children Red Ryder guns.

"Receiving an air rifle no longer represents a right of passage for a 10- or 11-year-old child," Ford explained. "Some of the antigun sentiment that comes and goes in this country has something to do with it. And then, of course, there are so many other things for kids to do these days. 

"When I was a kid, we all had our airguns that we carried around. They were a part of us most of the time, and we would never think to do anything with them that would hurt another person. It's a different story these days. 

"Now there's an awful lot of kids sitting in front of the television with a joystick in their hands," Ford continued. "There are still a lot of youngsters getting involved in organized air rifle competitions. But there are more kids involved in other activities like baseball and soccer and football. From the time kids today turn seven-years-old, they are involved in [organized] activities that didn't exist when I was growing up. Subsequently, air rifle ownership and responsibly are not the same activities they used to be 50 or 60 years ago."

When "A Christmas Story" went into production, Shepherd approached Daisy to recreate the airgun he owned as a child and later wrote about - a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass and sundial in the stock.

A search through Daisy's archives revealed the gun Shepherd described never actually existed. 

"The Red Ryder featured in 'A Christmas Story' was really a combination of two different guns the author must have remembered when he wrote his story," Ford explained. "There was the Buck Jones rifle, named after another cowboy movie hero. Red Ryder was named after a popular cowboy comic strip and movie hero, but the Red Ryder gun did not have a compass and sundial in the stock. The Buck Jones model did."

Regardless of the historical inaccuracy, Daisy made six "faux Red Ryders" for the film. Daisy later commercially produced a line of Red Ryder airguns complete with compasses and sundials. Called the Christmas Dream Model, Daisy sold them throughout 1984.

To raise money for the preservation of their archives, the Daisy museum made and sold 1,000 Christmas Dreams last year, commemorating "A Christmas Story's" 20th anniversary.

"But when Shepherd wrote his memoir, he remembered the name 'Red Ryder' because that model was so popular and the name was so well-known," Ford continued. "An awful lot of kids went to see Saturday afternoon penny matinees featuring Red Ryder serials. 

"There's a lot of nostalgia for the name," Ford continued, "and for Daisy air rifles in general. So when people gather around the television to watch 'A Christmas Story' and grandpa tells his grandkids, 'that's the Red Ryder I had when I was kid,' it's kind of funny because 'A Christmas Story' is being nostalgic about a gun that never really existed."

Shepherd used artistic license to describe his Red Ryder and make it "more desirable," Clavin explained. "Shepherd's voice was his fortune. He had a magnificent way of telling a story and a voice that locked in your attention. 

"As so many of his radio fans have written me over the years, we all thought Shep was at the other end of that radio talking 'only to me,'" Clavin continued. "It was as if he were sitting there next to me, relating a story of his childhood just as my grandfather or father would. This effect was amplified by the fact that he loved to tell stories and loved to make people laugh, and laugh at themselves."

The further we get away from our kid years, "the better we seem to remember ourselves shooting our Red Ryder airguns with impossible precision," Ford added, with a laugh. "It's like a big fish story. A guppy caught in the morning turns into a bass when you're telling the story that night."

At a time when the world seems to be moving at light speed, "we don't take the time to set back and reflect on the past" as Shepherd did, Clavin said.

"We keep thinking of what went wrong today," Clavin continued. "Only when we are sitting in front of the television watching 'A Christmas Story' do we have some of those memories jogged loose and take the time to remember."

Clavin launched his website as a hobby, using his interest in Shepherd's work as a theme. People who visit flicklives.com contribute pictures and information from their Shepherd collections. 

The website currently has hundreds of pages, including a database of over 2,000 broadcasts of Shepherd's radio shows.

Shepherd's stories often went through a process of being told on the radio, written into short stories for magazines like Playboy, collected for books like "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" and used in PBS specials and films like "A Christmas Story," Clavin said. 

"Many of the characters he spoke of were real people in his real life," Clavin added. "The key to his success was telling the story in first person, which made his listeners really believe the stories were true."

At the Daisy museum, an exhibit tracing the history of the Red Ryder airgun from the fall of 1940 to present day "gets the most ooh's and aah's as people come through," Ford said.

"You'd be surprised how many collectors are interested in that kind of thing," Ford explained. "Several years ago, I had a guy who started talking about changes in the Red Ryder and he knew them right down to the different kinds of screws used at one time or another the forearm stock.

"I thought, 'this is a whole lot more about the air rifle than I wanted to know,'" Ford added, with a chuckle. "There are folks who are very serious about their Red Ryders."

As a father, grandfather and lifelong Daisy aficionado, Ford said it saddens him "that we are losing the innocence that having a Red Ryder during [the Depression] represented.

"But that innocence is not limited to Red Ryder ownership," Ford continued. "I mean, everyone is going to be nostalgic about something. I'm going to think the good old days were the 1940s and '50s. College kids today are going to think the good old days were the 1980s and '90s. That's typical. 

"I can relate the loss of innocence to the gun I had as a kid - other generations will relate the loss to something else they had as a kid. It's not exclusively about Red Ryders."

Regardless of whatever "it" is, "there's undoubtedly a loss of something," Ford continued. "Maybe our kids are over-scheduled. They have everything mapped out for them. These days, when and where do they get to use their imaginations and daydream and create some of their own games and activities?

"We have all their games and all their routines mapped out for them," Ford said. "We're creating what they're going to be nostalgic about, rather than letting them determine it on their own. 

"Perhaps that's the loss right there."













‘A Christmas Story’ convention planned in Cleveland
November 17th, 2007 · No Comments
CLEVELAND — “A Christmas Story” House & Museum in Tremont, and the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel have announced plans for the first “A Christmas Story” Convention set for Nov. 23 and 24. 

Original actors from “A Christmas Story” will be on hand to greet fans and sign autographs, including Ian Petrella (Randy), Scott Schwartz (Flick), Zack Ward (Scut Farkus), Yano Anaya (Grover Dill), Tedde Moore (Miss Shields), Patty Johnson and Drew Hocevar (the two evil elves). The family car used in the film, a 1937 Oldsmobile Touring Sedan, will be debuted, and Moore will host a special unveiling of the chalkboard on which Miss Shields wrote “A ++++” in her classroom.

Daisy Outdoor Products is offering a special incentive for children 10 and older who enter the convention’s character look-alike contest dressed as Ralphie Parker. The makers of the Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun, based in Rogers, Ark., will choose one winner from the Top 5 “Ralphies” to appear on the packaging of a special edition BB gun, with “a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time” (a sundial) in honor of the “A Christmas Dream” Red Ryder BB gun which was produced in 1983 and used in the movie. Along with the prestige of posing as Ralphie, the winner will receive $100, his or her very own Red Ryder Range Model Air Rifle and a Leg Lamp. Daisy officials anticipate choosing the winner by early January and conducting the photo shoot in Cleveland in February or March. 

 The character look-alike contest will be judged by Petrella (Randy) and Schwartz (Flick). Winners in all character categories will win Leg Lamps and other “major awards.” 

Other convention events include a Chinese Turkey Dinner with the actors at C&Y Chinese Restaurant, tours of “A Christmas Story” House & Museum, a BB gun shooting range, screenings of the movie, and the Cleveland Winterfest parade and fireworks. The Renaissance, which will host most of the convention activities, is offering packages that include deluxe accommodations and buffet breakfast for two, complimentary parking, tickets to “A Christmas Story” House & Museum with free round-trip trolley transportation and in-room screenings of the movie. A similar weekend package is available after the convention through Feb. 3. For more information on the packages, call the Renaissance at 800-228-9290 and ask for promotional code H09.

The Renaissance will be the site of the character look-alike contest, the chalkboard unveiling, panel discussion and two meet-and-greet sessions with the actors. There is no admission charge for these events. There will be fees for autographs (as determined by the actors), and tickets for the dinner at C&Y are $45 for adults and $22.50 for children. Complete convention details, including how to purchase tickets for the dinner, are available online at www.achristmasstoryhouse.com. Fans also can call the house Wednesday through Sunday at 216-298-4919 for more information. 

Lolly the Trolley is offering round-trip transportation from the Renaissance and Tremont’s Clark Fields to the House on Nov. 23 and 24. Trips depart every half hour and round-trip tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for children from the hotel, and $1 (adults and children) from Clark Fields near Clark and W. 7th St. in Tremont. Executive Director Steve Siedlecki emphasized that parking near the house is very limited and encourages fans to take advantage of the ample parking downtown and at Clark Fields and travel by trolley.

“A Christmas Story” House & Museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 23, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 24 and noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 25. Regular admission rates of $7 for adults, $6 for seniors (ages 60 and older) and $5 for children (ages 7-12) will apply. Children ages 6 and younger are admitted for free. 

The house, with its accompanying museum and gift shop, is open for tours year round Thursdays through Sundays, and Wednesdays through Sundays in November and December. It is located at 3159 W. 11th St. in Cleveland’s Tremont district.

Preview What: “A Christmas Story” Convention When: Nov. 23-24 Where: The Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and “A Christmas Story” House & Museum Info: 216-298-4919 or www.achristmasstoryhouse.com 








Number Description Estimated Selling Price Hammer Price 

0208-0324 DAISY MODEL 1938B "A CHRISTMAS DREAM" RED RYDER B-B CARBINE, 20th Anniversary 1983-2003 limited edition #36 of 1000, hardwood stock with "Red Ryder" logo on right, sundial and compass on left, brass plated barrel band, ramp sight, saddle ring with leather tie, plastic cocking lever, lot #0803 008352, box and manual included, manufactured 2003. No FFL or B.C. required.  $150 - $200 $160