M-16s were built by Mattel. True or False

As most gun enthusiasts will tell you the AR-15 was designed by Eugene Stoner and then sold to Armalite.  Armalite then sold the design to Colt which enhanced it with an auto safety seer and sold it to the Department of Defence as the M-16.

With that history there is one question that I have.  I have heard countless times while serving in the Army that during the Vietnam War Mattel made the M-16.  When I first joined the Army the service rifle was the M-16A1.  Some of these rifles that I had seen were converted M-16s (3 prong flash hider and inscribed M-16).  All said Colt Firearms none were inscribed with Mattel.

Doing some searches and research I have come up with this answer.  Once the M-16 was issued it replaced the M-14 ( The last wooden battle rifle).  A heavy duty rifle that could easily be used as a baseball bat if you ran out of ammo.  After humping this thing through the jungles of Vietnam soldiers were given this rifle made of plastic that comparatively looked and felt like a toy.

Now the Mattel connection legitimately comes through here.  The original M-16s that were issued actually did have Mattel markings.......on the hand guards!  It seems to fill the original orders colt subcontracted the plastic parts (Handguards, buttstock, and pistol grip) with Mattel.  With these initial parts Mattel took the liberty of  having their logo put on the parts during the plastic forming process.  In later castings the logo was removed.

So in closing as we know Colt made and always made the M-16.  Mattel handled the plastic.

We gotta get that one it was made in Russia

The only item that I can think of is an AK-47 that would validate the title of this post.  What I am writing about today is Wolf Performance Ammunition (WPA)  I bought some recently.  It was more about price when I made the purchase and salivating on how many rounds I was getting for such a minuscule price.

What got me while shooting this ammo was accuracy.  I was firing my IAI Automag III in .30 caliber Carbine pistol at 10 yards/ 3 inch dots.  Practicing position 3-4, single shot, controlled pairs and double taps.  Here is an example of what was shot doing controlled pairs.

All shot groups pretty much mirrored this.  Be it double taps, single shot or as shown here controlled pairs.  Now I'm not the greatest shot but I know that I could do better.  I wanted to see if it was the ammo.

I made a square out of 2x2 pasters and shot 6 rounds USGI .30 carbine, controlled pairs at 10 yards.  Below are the results.

A LOT BETTER.  Some years ago I was able to get some Soviet match ammo (7.64x54R) and put it through a Nagant sniper.  I was not impressed with the grouping.  so I had to play around.  One of the schools i have attended taught me that you can take the components of 54 Rimmed and put it into .308 shell and get pretty good results.  So I tried this.  I went down to a little better than 1 MOA out of the US gun.  Then I tried it in reverse.  308 on a 54R cartridge (.30 cal BTHP)(Yes I do have the dies.)  resulted in a little over 1 MOA with the Nagant sniper.  This got me going so I reloaded some Norma brass that I had in 7.62x54R with the match ammo and then the brass itself.  with the norma I shot sub minute and the actual brass went to 1 minutes.

Don't get me wrong if you want to do a lot of shooting and want to focus on procedure Ie position 1-4,  clearing jams, double action 3-4, or anything else and precision is not a must than wolf ammo is the bullet for you.  However if precision is what is needed buy American!