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I read this book back in the early 80s. It was a book of children's short stories based around Science Fiction. This story, The Master Blaster, was about a boy who is on holiday and looking for a toy gun, and walks into a futuristic shop (called WPNZ) where he buys The Master Blaster, believing it to be a toy gun, but instead, when he takes it to the beach and tries it out on a seagull, finds it's anything but.

The Master Blaster has three settings; it can make a person vanish, silent, or motionless...

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  • Is this you as well; able2know.org/topic/157945-1? It mentions some details that you didn't mention; "A small boy enters a toy shop and buys a blaster weapon that has various buttons that, when pressed change the settings of the weapon. I THINK he is about to press one final button when the shop keeper appears and apologies to the buy. He says something along the lines of "I shouldn't have sold you the weapon I thought you were a warrior" – Valorum Aug 15 '16 at 21:58
  • Are you certain the title was "The Master Blaster"? – Adamant Aug 15 '16 at 22:01
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    Possibly this; isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?93808 – Valorum Aug 15 '16 at 22:10
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I think you're referring to "The Master-Blaster" by Pamela Cleaver.

The review here is terse, but apt.

There is fun as two children outwit their robot nanny, and space travellers find rocks that talk; thrills when five teenagers are trapped in a time-wrap on a quiet Scottish beach; and mystery when a toy gun turns out to be more than just a toy.

As far as I can tell, it has only ever been collected in a single volume, Skylark Science Fiction Stories, a book-club original.

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