I saw some young actor (think Ben Affleck or Freddie Prinze, jr) on a talk show a year or so ago–and he was proudly displaying this toy “air gun” that he had just found on Ebay.
I was a little excited, too, because I had had one many years ago. Here is the description:
The “barrel” of the gun was a hemispheroid (maybe the size of some coffee cups) sort of shape with a small hole (maybe the size of a nickel) in the front.
At the back of the “hemispheroid” was a diaphragm, probably made or something elastic, like rubber or plastic.
To “cock” the gun, you pulled back on this doohickey near the handle. That in turn was connected to the diaphragm, which was also pulled back.
When you pulled the trigger, it released the doohickey, which pushed the diaphragm forward (very quickly), which “blasted” out the air in the hemispheroid out the much smaller hole, presumably creating a small “jet stream.” I remember one of the things on the packaging showed a drawing of a guy firing it at a girl’s ponytail, causing it to fly up.
The GQ is “What was the name of this gun?”