Julie Lloyd laughs at it now.

“They really thought this four-inch plastic gun could be used as a weapon,” says Lloyd.

But when security at Gatwick Airport in England wouldn’t let her board an aircraft with a plastic toy soldier cradling a four-inch rifle saying it was a threat to passenger safety, she wasn’t laughing.

“It was all very stressful,” says Lloyd, 60, of Oakville.

She was visiting her mother in Essex and bought a figurine of a crouching army signaller holding a tiny SA80 replica rifle as a gift for her husband, Ken, who was retiring as a signaller from the Canadian Army.

The day she was flying back to Canada, Lloyd took the figurine — still in its wrapping — and put it in her carry-on luggage.

She didn’t anticipate any problem — it was, after all, a plastic toy.

But there was trouble when a security official, stationed at the scanner, spotted the thin, metal antenna accompanying the figurine’s backpack radio. Then he saw the little plastic rifle.

It was a firearm, she was told.

The soldier could go in the carry-on luggage but definitely not the rifle, security officials told Lloyd. She quietly tried to explain that it was plastic but was overruled.

Though rattled, she decided to mail it to herself. “But even though I found an envelope, I couldn’t put it in the airport post box,” she says.

But she found a postal supervisor who promised to mail it to her Oakville home. “I explained how important it was to my husband.”

The envelope was in her mailbox four days later.

“Security can be very stressful because they keep changing rules,” says Lloyd, adding that she kept her calm during the incident.

This happened in April 2009 and Lloyd had almost forgotten about it but the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp in Dorset, where she bought the figurine, went public with the story after learning about it from Lloyd in October 2010.

She has since been interviewed by British newspapers, Canadian media and even has an invitation for a TV interview in Montreal on Sunday.

The Star wasn’t able to contact anyone at Gatwick Airport on Friday. But a spokesperson for the airport told the British tabloid The Daily Mail that any firearms, including items that look like firearms, are prohibited on aircraft.

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“There are lots of other reasons an item could be prevented from going through security, such as large items that do not fit in overhead lockers on the aircraft,” she said.

Meanwhile, Lloyd, is just glad that she could present it to her husband at his retirement. “I wanted it to be a surprise but I had to tell him what had happened at the airport,” she said in an interview.

“But I think he was very happy with it in the end even though he said the rifle looked a bit bent.”