VIEW-MASTER (A-Z April Blog Challenge)

Picture credit: http://warmwire.blogspot.com/2010/07/surreal_15.html

Age doesn’t matter when it comes to a View-Master.   Anyone between the ages of five and 95 know about these little beauties.  One viewer, one disk with fourteen film slides mounted on a paper disc that produced seven magical 3-D images.  The discs are limitless and although View-Masters are now used primarily by children, they were originally used mostly by adults to view not only tourism discs, but educational ones as well.

I had all sorts of incredible discs for my View-Master.  Some were cartoons or Disney characters, but it was the animals, wildlife and landscapes that were my favorites.  Far off places like Peru and Switzerland were suddenly RIGHT THERE in front of me.  And yes, more than once or twice, I reached my hand out as I was looking through the viewer, sure that I’d be able to feel something. 

They were just a couple dollars in my youth, and now run for a little under ten.  The ORIGINALS, I mean.  Not the ones that “talk” and not the ones that automatically turn the slide for you.  (Isn’t that a slide view projector? ) At any rate, they operate the same as they always did and more than once I remember getting my finger caught by the lever on the right as I advanced to the next slide.  That would end up in a mixed picture of two of the images and made for some great viewing!

For as much as my husband and I loved ours, our son never owned one.  He got lots of the other classic toys we  had growing up – the Legos, Lincoln Logs, Pick Up Sticks, Card Games, Candy Land, wooden blocks, dominoes…but never his own View-Master.  The 3-D aspect would have been the coolest thing ever to him.

And it’s not going away anytime soon.  Yes, you can still buy the original from Fisher Price, but as I was being nostalgic and looking around on the web at this little marvel of a toy, I found you can MAKE YOUR OWN disks now as well as personalize the View-Master.  There are numerous facebook pages devoted to View-Master.  You can buy vintage reels and any number of accessories to store your reels.  And for those who have realized they just can’t leave home without it, you can now buy an app from the Apple iTunes app store.  Amazing…………..

It’s nice to know even with adding automation, technology and who knows who knows what else, the love of the old classic is what’s fueling the fire and remains the foundation for the love of all things View-Master.   We need more things with that kind of staying power today.