When James Bond goes shopping, he keeps buying the same damned thing over and over again. Just like you with those shoes you like. 

So, by now, you’d think the James Bond gun, like the Astin Martin DB series cars, would be associated with him forever more, end of story.

But no. This is why the German manufacturers of the Walther PPK (PPK stands for Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell) were trying to get the PPK handgun labeled, officially, as “James Bond’s weapon of choice” because, you know, a lot of people would want to own one of those. But the American Patent office disagreed that the gun had an aura or ‘mystique’. It’s a weird thing to argue, after all, the Patent office wasn’t taking the gun home to meet the parents.

So, the gun company, being German and knowing how much Americans and Germans both LOVE surveys,  did an online survey which showed that over half of responding gun lovers identified the PPK as that which sits in James Bond’s hot/cold hands.

Because of this magical online survey, the gun has its patent and is distinctively associated with said specific fictional character. But there are also real fictional good reasons for this: the real (fictional) James Bond carries this particular gun was because (deep breath) his old gun got caught on his jacket. That’s why M and Major Boothroyd ordered him to carry this niftier model. And it has a name that sounds like Walter.

That’s what’s important about it…and not that Hitler killed himself with a PPK (it says so right here) which is the only other historical thing I could find out and sort of wish I hadn’t.

No one, however, is fighting over James Bond’s choice of gum – and he has to stop smoking sometime.