• Stephen Slesinger pioneered multi-media promotions. First with “Tarzan” and then with “Winnie the Pooh,” he showed the success of coordinating TV, radio, and newspaper promotions. In 1938, he envisioned a western-themed newspaper cartoon strip to promote in a similar manner. All he needed was an artist.
• Fred Harman had previously worked as a newspaper, catalog, and Disney illustrator. When Slesinger and Harman collaborated, they created a Western cartoon called “Red Ryder.” Red Ryder was depicted as a cowboy hero, traveling the Rockies on his horse Thunder, accompanied by his Indian sidekick Little Beaver. His girlfriend Beth, ranch hand Buckskin, and arch-enemy Ace Hanlon also appeared regularly. At its height, the Red Ryder serial cartoon ran in 750 newspapers, from 1938 until 1967.
• Building on the comic strip’s success, Slesinger launched Red Ryder into comic books, TV serials, 26 movies, radio shows, and extensive merchandising, including Red Ryder decoder rings, posters, lariats, bullwhips, cap guns, holster sets, and coin banks.
- One day, Slesinger decided that Red Ryder should have a BB gun instead of a cap gun. As a result of this decision, he approached the Daisy Air Rifle Company.
- In 1886, the Plymouth Iron Windmill Co in Plymouth, Michigan, manufactured metal windmills. Each windmill purchase included a free gift: a metal air rifle, made by the same designer as the windmills. The air rifle soon outpaced the windmills in popularity. As a result, the company shifted its focus and began producing air rifles instead. In 1895, the firm changed its name to the Daisy Air Rifle Company.• When sales slumped during the Great Depression, the firm pursued kid-friendly tie-ins by recruiting a variety of famous cowboy actors to endorse the BB gun.
- In 1940, Slesinger and Daisy Air Rifle agreed to rename one of Daisy’s top carbines the Red Ryder Daisy Carbine Air Rifle. Slesinger’s promotion helped the company sell over a million units in a year.
- The iconic Red Ryder air rifle became embedded in American pop culture years later. The 1983 movie “A Christmas Story” was set in the U.S. in 1940, the same year Red Ryder first started promoting the air rifle. In the film, young Ralphie Parker begs his parents no less than 28 times to buy him a “Red Ryder range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time” for Christmas.
- In the film, Ralphie’s mom repeatedly denies his request, saying, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Ralphie gets his Red Ryder air rifle for Christmas at last, and promptly nearly shoots his eye out when a BB ricochets and shatters his glasses, demonstrating that his mom’s warning was justified.
- Air guns and children remain a volatile mix. A 2019 Pediatrics study found that nearly 14,000 children were treated annually for non-powder firearm injuries—including BB guns, air rifles, and paintball guns—between 1990 and 2016. About 15 percent of those injuries involved the eye.
- The agreement between Red Ryder and Daisy Air Rifle is still in place, holding the record for the longest continuous license agreement in the history of the licensing industry. While the Daisy Air Rifle is still being manufactured, few people remember who the original Red Ryder was.
