What movie gave the Red Ryder BB gun forever popular in American culture?”
“You’ll shoot your eye out!” When I was writing about that list of 12 (not 10) things you might not know about A Christmas Story, I did a bit of surfing around the Christmas Story Official House website where I found all sorts of goodies related to the film. Not only did I learn about an auction where you could bid on and win a chance to sleep in the Christmas Story house on Christmas Eve (winning bid was somewhere around five grand), but they also have a shop with stuff to purchase. Like, um, an actual Red Ryder BB gun. Sweet! To celebrate the film’s 25th Anniversary, they’re selling this limited edition A Christmas Dream BB gun. From the site: “For the 25th Anniversary of “A Christmas Story” that very same design “A Christmas Dream” can be yours. Packaged in a retro Red Ryder box with a custom sticker and certificate of authenticity, all of the graphics are engraved. A compass, marked with a brushed silver-tone metal rim, is recessed next to the engraved sundial. A silver band around
The film is set in the fictional city of Hohman (based on real-life city of Hammond, Indiana) in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Nine-year-old Ralphie Parker wants only one thing for Christmas: “an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.” Between run-ins with his younger brother Randy and having to handle school bully Scut Farkus, and his sidekick Grover Dill, Ralphie does not know how he will ever survive long enough to get the BB gun for Christmas. The plot revolves around Ralphie’s overcoming a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to his owning the precious Red Ryder BB gun: the fear that he will shoot his eye out. In each of the film’s three acts, Ralphie makes his case to another individual; each time he is met by the same retort. When Ralphie asks his mother for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, she says, “No, you’ll shoot your eye out.” Next, when Ralphie writes a theme about wanting the BB gun fo
