Moonraker, though considerably less hyped than The Black Hole and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, actually did better at the box office. I saw all three in ’79, and also remember seeing The Black Stallion (a gorgeous, unforgettable movie I didn’t fully appreciate as a kid: watch it again). I was dying to see Alien, especially after repeated exposure to one of the greatest trailers ever made, but that wouldn’t happen for a few more years.
Lone Star, a strange name for a UK company, specialized in die cast toys, like Corgi, another UK company that released some memorable Moonraker toys. Lone Star also made the neat “Golden Gun” seen below in 1975. The man who played the man with the golden gun was, of course, Christopher Lee, whose movies meant so much to me then and now that I haven’t been able to put anything into words yet.
(Second two images via 007 Collector)
Looks like they re-used the mold from an old spy gun toy for the Golden Gun, since neither Lee’s character nor James Bond used a Walther P38. But I do remember a toy P38 that came with a removable silencer, scope, and shoulder stock. And when Transformers hit that was Megatron’s gun form.
Interesting, and noted on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Gun_%28film%29#Release_and_reception
Bond is holding a similar looking gun in the movie poster (http://www.impawards.com/1974/man_with_the_golden_gun_ver1.html). Maybe Lone Star was trying to get as close as they could to that with materials at hand?
That’s a good guess.
On a related note, I still have my James Bond RPG Q Manual, which has stats for the Golden Gun. I never actually played the RPG, we used the manual for our home brew spy game. It has a lot of the classic gadgets in it.