Water guns appeared to have fallen out of favour with consumers in recent years and sales dwindled somewhat. But now, the toy guns are back in fashion.

"We're completely sold out, " said Kate Atkinson, supervisor at Toystop in Tallaght, Dublin, which has had to reorder water pistols from suppliers to keep up with demand. "We've sold more this summer than usual, but we've been out of them for a week now because of it. At the moment the Super Soakers are the most popular.

The thing is, water guns are popular from children aged three or four right up to teenagers, so there are a lot of people buying."

The story is the same around the country, with Toymaster in Limerick reporting "great" sales and the Toy Shop in Glanmire, Co Cork, classing them "a very popular item".

"We've sold quite a lot of them, more than usual, " a manager of the shop said. "A lot of people would be buying them for birthday parties, and obviously the hot weather helps sell them as well. They've definitely become very popular."

Water pistols enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the 1990s with the launch of Hasbro's 'Super Soaker', a gun that used compressed air to shoot water farther, but as the novelty of this new type of toy wore off, sales fell. Now, in a trend echoed across Britain, children (and some adults) are rediscovering water fights and water guns, especially in this summer's scorching weather.

Aidan Topley, assistant manager of Smyths Toy Store in the Jervis Shopping centre in Dublin said most of their sales have come in the past couple of weeks.

"They are definitely in the top 10 list of summer items people would be buying this year, " he said. "We're getting very good weather early this year, so that's going to improve their popularity. It's pretty much young fellas about the age of nine or 10 buying them. I'd say they would be more in fashion now than they were a couple of summers ago."