Did you know that Red Ryder didn’t begin his newspaper comic strip run as
“Red Ryder?” Creator Fred Harman launched a strip starring a
ten-gallon-hat-wearing, rifle-totin’ bandit-bungler named Bronc Peeler just
three years before offering a nearly identical strip starring Red in 1938.
Historians believe the characters are one and the same, though it’s rather
unclear why Bronc’s run was embarrassingly short-lived, while Red enjoyed a
30-year run.

Promoted Stephen Slesinger got involved at the onset of the
Red Ryder series, a benefit Bronc Peeler didn’t receive. The partnership between
Slesinger and Harman resulted in a multimedia bonanza with remnants echoing even
today. In 1940, a 12-part Red Ryder serial hit the silver screen. In 1942, there
was an exciting radio series. Red relished success in Big Little Books and comic
books for several years. And then, there were the rifles and BB guns.

With TNT’s 24-hour run of the popular 1980s film, A Christmas
Story, every single Christmas Eve, it’s quite possible that there will never
be a society that has never heard of the “Red Ryder” BB Gun… rumored to “put
your eye out.”

Daisy Air Rifles still manufactures Red Ryder rifles and
even though the company no longer uses an animated Red Ryder for TV commercial
campaigns, we’re sure that no commercial will ever have the resounding effect of
that annual back-to-back run of A Christmas Story.