David,
I believe a large part of Erma's bad reputation is due to the ill-conceived Luger clones, incorporating a toggle in a straight blowback is simply not a good idea (even though I have to admit that the concept is cool).
From my (intentionally) limited exposure to Erma's product, I gather that the rest of them are, just like you suggested, plain ol' knock-offs of proven designs. I don't know if even Erma was able to screw up a .22 blowback, so I assume that the PPK will work just as well as other cheap, zink frame .22s on the market. It actually looks well made, nice fit, finish and so on, the only possible problem would be the quality of the metal. Zink it's just not a good material for guns, especially if you consider the amounts of ammo you usually run through them.
|