I wanted one of these so badly that when I (naturally) didn’t get one, I went down to my wood shop (I was about 11 years old) and made two life-sized wooden ones (with the drum, even) so that my younger brother and I could have machine gun fights, a la “The Untouchables”. If I could have only one thing back I had as a kid, it would be these two wooden machine guns I made then.
Of course, now I have two of the real thing (full auto Thompsons, not Tommy Bursts), so that does take a bit of the sting off.
The bb guns these days are pretty cool. My son has an AK 47 replica that is full auto. We gave it to him a couple for xmas a couple of years ago. We gave him a jumbo size container of bbs which he used up in a couple of days. Bbs all over the backyard. Lol.
If I had my old Mattel I’d offer to trade you for your real one.