This story is pieced together from several sources, most of whom are no longer with us, but I have tried to stay away from the typical Nichols tradition of exaggeration and stick as close to the facts as possible.

Everybody who is in business always dreams of "Having Their Ship Come In," but in 1950, at the world famous New York Toy Fair, it actually happened to the Nichols brothers. In the previous year they already had 3 guns in their "stable," the Silver Pony, the Silver Mustang and the Silver Colt. They decided that if they were going to make an impression they needed to make "a big gun." So they stuck with the basic concept of the Colt 45 Peacemaker, but decided to make one as close to life size as possible. Plus it was going to have realistic action like a revolving cylinder and bullets and fire smoke out the end of the barrel. These concepts had already been done before, but Uncle Talley added a new twist to it. He made 2-piece bullets that would have a cap on the inside so that all of the smoke would be concentrated out the end of the bullet and it would also be safer for the young cowboy. This was a revolution in Cap Gun bullets. It also required our friend Al Cohen to come up with the round Stallion caps.

Well, with Jack Tarrant's help they tooled up about 3 prototypes to introduce at the New York Toy Fair. In those days the fair wasn't held in a convention hall as such, but each dealer in the hotel had his own suite where he displayed all of his goods. So the Nichols brothers displayed their current three Cap Guns and the new prototype, which, by the way, was going to cost a lot more than the other guns.

On the first day they opened the doors and sold a bunch of the older guns and had quite a bit of buzz about the new Stallion 45. In fact, they sold $600 worth of the new Stallions. Now you must remember that they were (1) taking orders for these guns, (2) a dollar was worth about 12-14 of our dollars in those days. (A gallon of gasoline only cost about 20 cents or less!) and (3) they were selling to wholesalers and jobbers who were paying a much lower price than retail. This $600 worth of an unknown Cap Gun made the brothers sit up and take notice!

On Tuesday, when they opened the door for business there were people lined up down the hall, waiting to get in to see the new Cap Gun. In addition to the older guns, by closing time they had sold $6,000 worth of the new Stallion 45's. This created a sensation and they knew that they had a hit on their hands.

On Wednesday pandemonium broke out in their area and there were dealers and jobbers lined up all over their floor and nearly breaking the door down to get in to see the new gun. They wound up closing early and locking the door and counted their orders. They had sold $60,000 worth of the new Stallion 45's. This created a panic in Uncle Talley, as he knew that it was about an entire year's worth of manufacturing and they hadn't even properly tooled up yet. So he told my dad, Lewis that he had better fly back to Pasadena and get the tooling running RIGHT NOW! If that wasn't enough trouble, the Toy Fair officials found out that the Nichols brothers had locked their door early and warned them that they had signed a contract NOT to lock their doors.

So Uncle Talley flew home and my dad Lewis opened the door on Thursday. By noon he had sold another $60,000 worth of Stallion 45's (still in addition to the other guns!) and he locked the door and didn't care what the officials declared. Well, what was declared was that the Nichols Stallion 45 was the "Toy Of The Year" in 1950. Overnight (almost) the Nichols brothers had gone from relative obscurity to a national celebrity status in the toy world. Their future was assured and the rest of the story is the stuff of legend.

Click on photo for enlarged view
Thanks to David Denton of The Antique Cowboy for this photo!