At some point in my teenage years, I developed something of a crush on the Heckler & Kock MP5K. I mean, the regular MP5 was cool, and so was the integrally-suppressed SD variant, but it was the chopped-down kurz variant with its stubby foregrip that really lit my fuse. I have no idea why. Probably some combination of it looking very cool and being a diminutive fully-automatic machine pistol. Maybe it had good stats in a role-playing game I was into, or something? Anyway...
Owning anything like the real thing is onerous and kinda frivolous. Full-auto ones are stupid expensive and I still have flashbacks about trying to keep our knackered hangar queen of a rental MP5K-PDW running back in my days at Coal Creek Armory.
You can get an old HK SP89 pistol or its newer SP5K replacement, but to make it an authentic-looking MP5K or MP5K-PDW clone would require NFA paperwork. You'd either need to get a tax stamp to add the vertical foregrip, making it an AOW, or a stock and foregrip, making it an SBR. And then you still have a big, clunky semiautomatic 9mm pistol.
So the MP5K is one gun that I tend to be plenty happy with sticking an airsoft copy on the shelf and foregoing buying the real thing.
For that matter, an MP5K copy was my first experience with airsoft, back in the Eighties. At the time, airsoft wasn't really a thing in the US, so Daisy imported a handful of guns, most from Maruzen, and sold them under the "Daisy Softair" label. Their realistic appearance caused a bit of a stink, and so they were only sold for a couple years, '86-'87, before being discontinued, making them kind of collectible now.
The only one not made by Maruzen was the Model 15, an MP5K copy, that was made by Falcon Toy Corporation. Naturally it was my favorite, and I bought one from Service Merchandise back in the day, along with clones of the Intratec KG-9, Luger, and Smith Model 59. Recently I stumbled across one on eBay, and couldn't resist buying back a chunk of my misspent youth.
I'm not super-hip to airsoft terminology, but I believe these would be called spring-powered blowback shell ejectors? To operate them, you'd load the BBs into the plastic dummy shell cases and load those into the magazine. Chambering a round would cock the weapon, and when you fired, the slide or bolt would lock to the rear after ejecting the empty shell.
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| Modern AEG (airsoft electric gun) MP5K copies tend to have more faithful lines than the old manually-operated Daisy. |
On the Model 15, this was done by cycling the vertical foregrip, and this meant there had to be space on the front of the receiver that the original MP5K did not have, giving the Daisy Model 15 a rather...er, distinctive appearance.
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| "Hey, that gun looks familiar..." |
Produced for the US market, the Model 15 was careful to avoid any references to H&K, who are fiercely protective of their branding and trade dress. The Tokyo Marui AEG in the photo above was a gray market import from Hong Kong back in '02 or '03 and all HK markings are carefully covered up to avoid imperial entanglements. Nowadays, of course, you can get a licensed high-quality full auto electric MP5K clone straight from Amazon without having to worry that customs is going to jack up your transpacific shipment.
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