The Love Gun

After LOVE GUN sunk it’s sugary sharp teeth into my side I began scouring every music rag and antique outlet I could squeeze into my summer vacation all thanks to an article in my "Might And Magic of KISS" magazine called, "KISS Sells and Everybody’s Buyin’". This served as my first exposure to the mass merchandising world of KISS. Eyeballing treasures like the puzzles, trading cards, toy guitar and the KISS Radio I was completely taken back. Collecting KISS was about to become an addiction.
Down from my bedroom wall went the STAR WARS poster and assorted Motley Crue pics and up went everything KISS I could apply scissors and scotch tape to. All the while keeping a sharp eye on the rainbow leading to the KISS pot of gold. I had no idea it would come in the form of a run down shop in downtown St. Joe called, T & T Variety.
My mom, who commuted downtown everyday for work had mentioned a store with ‘rock and roll stuff in their window’ and that she would drop me by if I wanted to check it out. With the possibility of KISS merchandise inside I didn’t hesitate.
Inside it was everything I had excepted. T & T was your typical rundown, musty smelling, flea market of a store where collectors of all breeds could find vinyl LP records, nudie magazines, and emptied rusted beer cans from days gone by. After several minutes of wandering the cramped store in silence the owner asked me if he could help me find anything. I shyly answered, ‘KISS’ and with a toothy grin he rocked back in his swiveled wooden chair and began rifling through a metal filing cabinet. The next thing I knew I was holding a shiny LOVE GUN belt buckle. I could have puked my stomach felt as if it were going to shoot through my throat.
"How much?" I asked, knowing deep down I could never afford such a sweet ride.
"I’ll take fifteen," he replied. Money had never exchanged hands faster. With that purchase a friendship and lifestyle was formed. I was officially becoming a collector of KISS, and now I had someone working for me on the ‘inside’. The owner of T & T Variety made a promise to me to call me anytime he ran across a KISS item and thank God he stuck to just that promise. A few weeks later a phone message blinked brightly on my answering machine with a message describing something to the effect of a ‘gun’ that ‘hadn’t been put together yet’. Another jog downtown with the ol’ Ma was planned and inside T & T the recorded message rang true. It was a ‘gun’ and all of my LOVE GUN visions of grander were about to come true.
For twenty bucks I was now the proud owner of an unassembled LOVE GUN toy insert and merchandise ordering form that had been packaged in the original album. Not only was this an object that I felt I had no chance in hell of ever owning, but I was about to take part in the pleasure enjoyed by children of the 1970’s…assembling my very own LOVE GUN ‘popping gun’. Sometimes it’s the little things that make life enjoyable.
After assembling my LOVE GUN and playing with it for a few weeks I retired it to a frame where it has remained to this day. Aside from damning comments issued by fellow KISS collector Mike Jackson, a good ol' boy from Faucet Missouri, with the pension to keep all KISS artifacts in perfect MINT condition,
"You don’t fold the Mona Lisa, you’re a fool for putting that together."
I can honestly say I haven’t regretted a single day. In fact lady luck came back hard 12 years later on a Saturday morning Vintage Stock run when I ran across a vinyl copy of LOVE GUN for $6.00…inside the LOVE GUN merchandise form and yet another unfolded, straight as an arrow LOVE GUN toy complete with the BANG! BANG!, folding paper to which has also remained flat as a pancake behind a glass frame to this day.
"Happy Mr. Jackson?" I thought so.