English: Complete copper-alloy toy gun of the kind often called a 'petronel', with its ramrod still stuck in the barrel. Externally, the barrel is 57 mm long and octagonally facetted with the two side facets wider than the others; internally, it is cylindrical. On the top three facets, near the butt, are faint lines of stamped dots. When held with the butt towards the observer and the barrel facing away, the left-hand wider side facet has here two ring-and-dot motifs, and the right-hand facet has a transverse moulding in front of a small conically drilled gunpowder pan. Just behind, on the bottom, is a large rectangular trigger guard which is now very worn. There is a ring-and-dot motif on the right-hand side of the stock here. The stock tapers and flattens, and then flares out again into a triangular butt with a curved upper edge. Each face has three ring-and-dot motifs. The stock is now a little bent. The ramrod is made from a darker brown metal; its handle has a hemispherical moulding to either side of a smaller rounded moulding, giving a 'bow-tie' effect. It is rare to find these toy guns intact. They are based on the match-lock 'petronels' of the 16th and 17th centuries, and as can be seen from this example with gunpowder pan, hollow barrel and ramrod were fully working models. The moulding in front of the pan represented the mechanism which automatically levered a match into the powder, but on these toys the match would simply have been touched into the pan by hand. Examples are known as early as the late 16th century, but since neither the later wheel-lock nor flint-lock could be made in a working miniature form, they may have continued in popularity long after the full-size match-lock became obsolete.