Comments on: Comments on 11713

Post number 11713

skyscraper — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:17:53 -0800

Still have a Viewmaster? Then get some of these. Or have some made just for you. Or make your own. No Viewmaster? Then look here for instructions to make 3D glasses and stay to look around. Like that extra dimensions? Go here.

By: Kafkaesque

Kafkaesque — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:32:53 -0800

tearful confession: when I was a kid, in a fit of pique, I hurled my sister's entire collection of ViewMaster reels out the window of my mom's car as we sped down the street. I also once destroyed her autograph from that guy on BJ & The Bear. Regrets? I've had a few. but back to the matter at hand: I loved the ViewMaster when I was a young sprout...and I seem to remember my favorite reel being a Mars one. Also, is the ViewMaster related to that old 3d thing that would attach to the viewer's forehead with a diorama-like scene, and the viewer would wear 3d glasses? Hell, the way I described it sounds like Winston's rat cage from 1984... We also had another Disney item that was sort of like an animated ViewMaster...you would insert a little cartridge and turn a crank...it was probably just a little film strip thingy. I liked it because you could run it backwards too.

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:53:40 -0800

GREAT post!!

By: mayalucia

mayalucia — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 14:58:31 -0800

What I would give to find my first ViewMaster. It was 3 reels of the Muppets...sigh

By: djfiander

djfiander — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:22:39 -0800

I love East Side Mario's viewmaster dessert menu. Too bad I never have room for dessert.

By: owillis

owillis — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:28:42 -0800

My favorite thing about Viewmaster? The SPROING! it made as you advanced the frame and the lever went up. One of my favorite toys...

By: spinning jennie

spinning jennie — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:51:12 -0800

Kafkaesque - I think the "animated ViewMaster" you're referring to is the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer, or one of the many imitations. An awesome vintage toy, one that I'm sorry they don't produce anymore. Ah, well, tough to compete with GameBoy, I suppose... I liked the reels that were "Claymation-y" best. We had some Peanuts from the seventies that were seriously trippy.

By: idiolect

idiolect — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:56:51 -0800

I loved my Viewmaster when I was a kid, but around age 16, I lost use of my left eye. For the most part, I don't notice it much (two eyes are not that crucial to depth perception), but I do miss the 3-D toys.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:58:44 -0800

What I would give to find my first ViewMaster. I still have ALL my old Viewmaster reels. Nyah nyah!

By: Steven Den Beste

Steven Den Beste — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:03:54 -0800

View Master used to be a company in the Portland metro area, where I grew up. It actually goes back a very long way. When I was a kid, my grandparents had some B/W Viewmaster disks of the Columbia Gorge from the 1930's. They were cool. Back then the product was mostly sold in the Northwest.

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:25:04 -0800

I'm so old I hated Viewmaster almost as much as my triple-Alice in Wonderland 78 r.p.m. set(for about 14 minutes' worth of songs). Don't us baby boomers have better things to do with our money that keeping freakin' Viewmaster alive? Like, for instance, doing the same for poor old Polaroid, whose SX-70 camera...

By: heather

heather — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 17:31:13 -0800

you can find quite a few viewmaster products on ebay, quite reasonably priced. i should know... the summer of '99 was my officialy viewmaster summer when i bid for a few viewmasters and a collection of 150 reels. the reels date from the late thirties to the sixties and are a remarkable record of many of the national parks. i think my favourite is the one for white sands national monument. next thing to cross of my childhood wish list is the easy bake oven.

By: Dirjy

Dirjy — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 21:18:32 -0800

This summer I pulled my old collection of Viewmasters and reels out of my parents' house, brought them home and passed them on to my duaghter. Now she has everything from early 60s collections of national parks and Disneyland that my older brother originally owned, to my collection of Marvel, DC and Harvey comics character reels from the 70s that I collected. spinning jennie -- that link to the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer was incredible! I hadn't thought about mine for about twenty years, that photo of the hand-held viewer took me back. I wonder if my parents kept that in storage as well...

By: y2karl

y2karl — Mon, 22 Oct 2001 23:52:23 -0800

I, myself, still have a Viewmaster. I only wish I had the Life series with The Charles Knight tyrannosaur. I am always looking for vintage Seattle reels as well...

By: betobeto

betobeto — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 00:05:54 -0800

I don't just still have many of my original Viewmaster reels from my child era, but some years ago I bought one of those Viewmaster toy wall projectors just for the fun of it. I guess I have used it twice, tops, but it was fun. Oh yeah... that awesome Fisher Price movie viewer! I remember very well all the seven film cartridges I had. I even ripped some apart to know what animated films are really like... which is what I guess turned me on the direction of being an animation aficionado after all these years.

By: username

username — Tue, 23 Oct 2001 15:55:20 -0800

You can still buy buy VM stereo cameras and the cutters to punch the film, but the blank reels are out of production. This place is overpriced but a good resource if you want to get started in 3D or want a special set of old reels and don't want to wait around ebay forever.