Victor Bonnet pistols.

11 augustus 202226 februari 2023 ~ admin

Victor Bonnet has taken over the Flersheim factory in 1919, Victor Bonnet started making small tin pistols somewhere around 1919.
He started with his first model the Pan-Pan and ended ( as far as we know) with the Le Corsaire model.
After the relocation of the production of the Victor Bonnet factory in 1933, we no longer find pistols in the product range.
Probably is that the Victor Bonnet & Cie-in-liquidation, sold the patents and trademarks of guns/pistols to JEP.
In an JEP wholesalers catalog from July 1936, I found pistols with the same names as given in the production period of Victor Bonnet till 1933.

The Victor Bonnet list with pistol models with article numbers
Le Pan-Pan 247
Flac 256
Bombarde 257
Le Pétard 258
Tape_Fort 262
Le Sans-Balle 264
Le Costaud 266
Le Corsaire 269

In this enlarged part of the catalog page we see all the known Victor Bonnet pistol names except for one toy and that is number 1021 the Le Baby, that was a very small model with a length of 9.5cm.
Maybe this model also comes from Victor Bonnet but I have no certainty about that so far.

If we search in old JEP catalogs we still find many of these models back to 1961, so they have been in production at JEP for about 25 years.
If you take Victor Bonnet’s oldest model, the PanPan, it has even been in production for more than 35 years at the Victor Bonnet factory and the JEP factory together, but we see that the models have been modified and “modernized”

Here we see that the names are the same but that the some models have been modified and “modernized” (catalog early 60’s )

Recognize the differences between the Victor Bonnet and the older JEP pistols:

Both manufacturers have the name of the gun on one side and the name of the manufacturer on the other side. The image of the text may also deviate slightly, straight or curved. To make it clear, here is some examples of the “Bombarde” and the “Pan-Pan” models.