My favorite cap toy was those darts with a heavy metal holder and plunger set up on one end and plastic flettching. You tore off a single cap square and put it in the holder, screwed the plunger back in place and threw it at something had so the cap popped. I gues it was a precurser to my being forced into the Field Artillery when as a preteen I figured out you could shoot the things over the house with a sling shot and have them hurtle down like mortar shells into the driver way where sister and girl buddies were playing hop scotch. Unfortunatly odds that a dart might wack a girl on the noggin were high enough to cause some concern, but over looked, until all the darts and caps got taken away amongst the crying and wailing.
Later I had "Replica Models" very realistic zinc firearms models that frequently field strip pretty much the same as the real gun they were a model of (P38 close enough that when first handed a P1 by the German Army I stripped it right down, the 1911 lacked a barrel link and locking grooves on barrel or slide but otherwise was like a real one for assembly ). Some of these used solid bras dummy cartridges with what appeared to be a hollow point. One cut the dots from paper caps and pressed a couple into the hollow point and one could "fire" the model.
The theatrical Model M1928 A1 Thompson belonging to a friend actually cycled when so loaded semi or full auto! This caused a few "Wee-wee" moments for some folks. This one did not strip like an original but looked close enough I nearly got arrested with it on the floorboard of my car one night. Local Yokel LEO finally convinced it was a toy actually pulled the trigger....and got of a four round burst as a surprise....that counted as one of the "Wee-wee" moments!
My dad around 1960 got a very realistic chrome plated zinc DA cap pistol that looked like the then new Colt Commander. A couple of his friends initially thought it real. It was stolen around 1971 at a car repair shop because we forgot it was in the glove box. Never have found one like it. You pushed down the slide safety and the slide could be drawn back and the cap magazine popped out of the ejection port, hinged at the front, a roll was inserted the strip started and the magazine pused back in and the slide locked forward. Tearing off the excess cap tape reurned it to its realistic guise.
I loved roll caps. We also had in the early and mid 1960s sheets of round green stick on caps. Pealed them off a sheet like a price sticker and pressed them onto the backs of Faux cartridges for SAA toy revolvers for instance. My gunslingers gun had little brass cartridges with a spring in them and one pressed a grey plastic bullet into the end and when the hammer fell on them it imparted sufficient inertia that the bullets unhooked from the cartridges and the springs shot them down the barrel. They launched the grey bullets with out the caps but the added sound and smoke made the game better...oh course we drew on one another ... and still argued about who shot first and who's shot was most effective.
Some toys featured plastic bullets that worked like a spigot mortar. They fit over and undersized spigot on a cartridge or fixed in the barrel of the toy and the blast of a cap, Greenie Stickie or Red Roll, powered the shot. One kid had a Parris Rifle that rather than being an 1903 clone was a percussion muzzle loader. It came with little undersized cork balls that could be rolled down the barrel and launched via the gasses from a cap crushed by the hammer....just like a real Maynard Tape Primer, except it was individual caps and not roll. There were two vent holes at the breech to prevent balls being driven to hard lest on "Put Your Sister's Eye Out" (How did moms always manage to capitalize that in spoken word?) I think it took us five minutes or so to go looking for duct tape to close the vents with. It worked yet none of us have sisters with eye patches.
Maybe they called us Boomers for the caps and not the Baby Boom?
"OK, BOOMER!"
-kBob