I never once claimed anything...
...it wouldn’t surprise me that at minimum Mattel played a part because of their expertise in injection molding and different qualities of plastics of the time .
A leading manufacture in that industry seems like a reasonable start .
As I stated in my last post (the part you say you didn't read, I suppose), you made two claims that are in bold above.
My point was that there is no evidence that Mattel was a leading manufacturer in high-strength/performance polymers nor that they had expertise in that field, nor even that they had any experience at all.
Did they know plastics? Yes, like they knew metal from making diecast Hotwheels. What I was getting at is that the idea that they were experts in high-strength polymers based on their production of plastic toys is just as hard to swallow without evidence as it would be to believe that they were experts in producing high-performance steel parts based on the fact that they knew how to make metal diecast toys.
Lots of people have said they had "Mattel" marked M16s, no one has provided any proof and honestly, today, a photo isn't the 'proof" it once was.
Not only that, but from all the evidence I have seen, none of the plastic M16 parts (regardless of their sourcing) were ever stamped with any manufacturer name. It stretches credibility that the one manufacturer name that would be allowed to be stamped on the parts would be one that would obviously have such a negative connotation. As one person has aptly observed on this thread:
"...if I were making a firearm and any part of it was made by a manufacturer famous for making toys . I would have it in my contract that their name is nowhere stamped on any of the products they make . That’s just asking for bad advertising . "
So what do we have to work with?
- No stamped parts. No evidence that any M16 plastic parts had any manufacturer name on them ever, let alone Mattel's.
- No credible pictures of stamped parts.
- No evidence at all, nor any claims from the Mattel side that they ever contracted to make parts for any military contracts or for any firearms.
- No evidence from the government or any military contractor that Mattel submitted any bids, received any payments, or delivered any parts.
- No evidence that Mattel ever worked with high-performance polymers.
Given the number of people who would have had to have been involved in the process, it's incredible (in the literal sense) that all the hard evidence could have simply disappeared without any trace. Given the continued interest in the myth, it's inconceivable that no one either on the government side, the firearm manufacturer side or from Mattel has ever come forward with anything conclusive.
In other words, we are forced to believe that the people involved were so incompetent and lacking in prescience as to allow a toy manufacturer to stamp military firearm parts with their name and then, after allowing that to happen, became suddenly superhumanly competent. They were then able to destroy every shred of evidence remaining. All the stamped parts, all the pictures of them, all the government paperwork, all the firearm manufacturer paperwork, all the banking/payment records, all the records at Mattel. AND, they managed to get to every person involved on both the contractor and government side and convince them to remain silent on the topic--not just until the end of the Vietnam war, but for half a century--up to present times.