A brainteaser for the collectables crowd:

Can you think of instances where a spring-powered production airgun crossed the invisible line that made it inelegant, expensive to manufacture, or even downright ugly, limiting its mass appeal and thus commercial viability?

The vintage airguns that had staying power tended to be those where the challenges of powering the gun didn’t come at the expense of streamlined looks.

I’m thinking of the compact Webley pistols and ingenious BSA rifles as success stories and, off the top of my head, the Certus/Parker Precisiion/Westley Richards ‘Highest Possible’ pistols and the Kynoch Swift rifles as among those that just couldn’t compete.

Strangely, one recent example that seems to have bucked the trend is the Weihrauch HW45, which has always looked painfully top-heavy to me.