Gun toys were pretty common as Christmas gifts when I was growing up (born 1949), most of the ones I got were cheap plastic and shattered after a while. Toy cars, trucks, planes. But there were other things that were even more dangerous. One year I got a chemistry set -- the kind with actual chemicals in it, and an alcohol burner. You can't buy those anymore, or even the chemicals to put your own together. Better yet, back then, when you ran out of a chemical, say sulfur for example, you could go buy it at any drug store. It even included a little tube with a sample of radium in it, so you could see it glowing in the dark (not really as scary as it sounds; it had less radium than the average watch dial, and I never did actually see it). One year, my brother was given a microscope set, with orders to share it with me. Scientific educational toys were more common then, I think, and it's too bad.
I think my favorite gun toy was a somewhat crude replica of a military rifle, called Cadet something. It had a moving bolt action and trigger, wooden stock, cheap steel tubing barrel, and it didn't even fire caps. The thing about it that made it so great was that it came with a booklet that showed how to do field drills, all the positions like parade rest, right-shoulder-arms, etc., and the shooting stances too. I practiced those things a lot for a while. I don't recall clearly, but I think it may have included some kind of form in it; you'd get a veteran to watch you do the drills, and he'd sign off on it and you could send it in for a certificate or something. I do recall having one of our family's ex-military friends come over and watch me go through the drills. He had a problem when it came to the shooting stances, because I did them all left-handed.