This wood, metal, and plastic form was the prototype for the very first metal Buck Rogers gun, the XZ-31 Rocket Pistol, a hugely-successful toy produced by Michigan-based Daisy Manufacturing Co. in 1934.

Although cardboard Buck Rogers guns had already been created in the early 1930s, when the Dille family, which owned Buck Rogers, wanted to create a gun toy, this model demonstrated that the form of the weapon drawn in the strips was impractical to reproduce as a mass market plaything. Instead, Dille and Daisy asked Buck Rogers writer Philip Nowlan and illustrator Dick Calkins to redesign the guns, holsters, and helmets drawn in the comics to make them easier to replicate as toys.

An advertising campaign and a one-week exclusive marketing agreement with Macy's Department Store in New York City yielded 2000 eager buyers on the first day that the toy was sold. In the second week of sales, fierce competition between Macy's and Gimbel's changed the price almost hourly (elsewhere, it cost 50¢). By Christmas, a holster and helmet were available for consumers who wanted to act out Buck's advertures.

Michael O'Harro gave this model to the National Collection in 1993.