View-Master

["Green Fedora"]

:eusa_clap I still have my View-Master collection from way back when I was a kid,have many rare and hard to find sets,single reels,two viewers,a projector.Among my many favorites among my rare sets is,"The Green Hornet"[1966-1967 T.V.SHOW],I also have it on three[3]Tru-Vue Cards,made by View-Master,with the viewer,I am still collecting 3-D View-Master,and Tru-Vue,and have extra repeat sets for sale and/or trade.

 

[JennyLou]

I have a View-Master with reels from Star Trek: The Original Series!

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

I had the late 60s, early 70s squarish version. Though we must have had quite a few reels to look at, what i remember is one of Atom Ant.
Now, I have an older, black Viewmaster from amongst my grandmother's things.

 

[Hamilton_Honey]

Yay for 3-D!

I also grew up with a view master - I still have it and some of the reels too. My sister and I both got them for our kids as well, so the next generation could enjoy them and they do!

My favorite reels now are the earlier scenic ones mainly. I have one of San Francisco from 1946 with hardly any cars one bridge, and Hawaii about that same time or slightly later. Also, one about "The American Indian" which fascinated me as a kid and my very favorite so far "Gene Autry and His Wonder Horse Champion."

I acquired a junior projector as well though it doesn't do the 3-D thing. I'd love to get hold of more classic travel reels.

Looking back on it now, I can see how influential this toy was for me as well as hours of fun.

 

[Hamilton_Honey]

Still have mine, and use it too. It's cheaper than cable TV...

I'd like very much to find View Master Reel 296, the St. Louis Zoological Park, 1948 -- if anyone has a spare copy, let me know.

I don't have this one in my collection, but I was able to locate #295 on the bay - is there a second disc from 1948?

I can keep my eyes open here in Arizona - adding to my shopping list

 

[Geesie]

Hah! I was trying to explain the concept of a View-Master to my son just yesterday. When I showed him a picture of one online, and explained how it worked, he just looked at me, [huh], and walked away. Apparently it's just too low-tech for him to grasp.

Funny. I remember enjoying the Viewmaster and just recently I've been using tabletop stereoscopes like this one to analyze aerial photography.

 

[andy richards]

Up to now I never thought about my viewmaster, which I've got in the mid 60's. I am sure it must be at my mothers house and next week I will try to find it! I remember I had "Thunderbirds" and pics of "Famous Cities". Will post if I find them!

 

["Green Fedora"]

MY VIEW-MASTER COLLECTION

:eusa_clap I have a collection of View-Master that goes all the way from the 1950's to the present,have three viewers,one projector,and three versions of the B488 "Green Hornet" 1966 21 3-D pictures sets[2 variation sets of the packet version,and a Tru-Vue set],I also have doubles of certain packets for trade or for sale.:eusa_clap

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've got a Sawyer View Master -- most likely a postwar model -- that had been in the family for as long as I could remember, and I've also got a stereo viewer from the early 1930s in the original box that a neighbor gave me some years ago -- I believe it was also made by Sawyer. On this early model the images were on rolls instead of discs.

 

[23SkidooWithYou]

I had a squared off taupe colored viewmaster from somewhere around 1969 or 1970. I had a slightly "lazy eye" as a tot and the doctor ordered my Mom to get me a viewmaster and encourage me to use it frequently. (The doctor Rx'd TOYS!) The idea was that it forced me to focus my eye correctly and it was entertaining too!

I think I remember a reel about Washington DC (boring at the time) and Huckleberry Hound and Brother's Grim Billy Goat Gruff...I clicked past the ogre under the bridge pretty quickly because he was pretty scary!

Whaaa! I miss my Viewmaster.

 

[Lou]

I had a Viewmaster when I was a kid. I bought one for my son, but haven't kept up with finding new reels for him. I need to add that to my list for second hand shops and antique shops.

 

[Phineas Lamour]

There is a section at Target with remakes of old toys. They have Viewmasters there. I had one as a kid in the early 80s. Totally awesome.

 

[Lillemor]

I had a late 70s view-master which was of course new when I got it. I'm now sitting with five "new" view-masters my dad sent me. Four of them and the reels are from between 1991-1996. Won't be long before I can call those vintage. These are for my boys. Then there's a fifth one in a round hard box "bucket" with a plastic lid. The view-master leaflet says the view-master indicates that the view-master is from 1949 but the view-master depicted in the leaflet is much different from the viewmaster in the bucket that looks like something squarish from the 70s the way I remember them and the reels say 1946 on them. Anyway, it's nice to see what the really old view-masters would've looked like. Shame my dad only kept the reels from his childhood. The newer reels don't have years on them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I recently came across a nice specimen of a View Master Model B, and was reminded of this old thread. I'd been using a Model A, made from lightweight "Tenite" plastic, and the warpage has gotten severe, to the point where the reels don't advance normally, so this was a serendipitous find.

This is the type of viewer -- it was introduced in 1944, and is made of hard bakelite to prevent the warping problems common in the earlier lightweight model.

Found with the viewer was a View Master catalog from 1945, which, in addition to listing the available subjects, boasted that the device was being widely used as a military training aid. Has anyone ever found any of these military reels? I'd assume they were all destroyed after the war, but if any have surfaced it might be interesting to hear about them.

While View Master is largely considered a kiddie toy today, that perception didn't exist until the barrage of cartoon-character subjects hit during the baby-boomer years. When the system was introduced in the late thirties, the emphasis was on scenic and educational subjects -- in a time when few people could afford to travel, thirty-five cents for a View Master reel of the Grand Canyon was as close as they'd ever get to being there. Some of these reels are truly gorgeous to look at -- the Kodachrome hasn't faded a bit, and when viewed with natural sunlight, they give an astonishingly realistic effect. The reels of the 1939 World's Fair, in particular, have scenes which make you feel you're actually standing right there -- the only thing that spoils the illusion is that the flags are frozen in mid-flap.

 

[Stearmen]

I did not think about the cartoon angle. When I was a kid, we looked at scenic pictures in the View Master, much like the older Stereoscopic viewers! They were magical, and I had access to both.

 

[Fading Fast]

...

This is the type of viewer -- it was introduced in 1944, and is made of hard bakelite to prevent the warping problems common in the earlier lightweight model....

I have a bakelite radio (FADA is the brand) - it is a fantastically strong material and it is a rich brown color. Nothing about the radio looks or feels "cheap" as later plastic products do.

It seems - based on all the products I see that were made from bakelite - that it was a major material used in manufacturing for many years in the GE. The speaker and earpiece on our 1920s intercom phone is - we've been told - bakelite (although, I'm suspicious because it doesn't have the classic deep brown of all the bakelite I've seen). And I'm pretty sure a friend's gearshift knob in his 1940s Buick was bakelite.

Any idea how bakelite was viewed by the public in its day - as a miracle product or as a "cheap" plastic? Did it disappear as "better" plastics became available?

And that is a gorgeous viewer - enjoy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bakelite was actually seen as rather antiquated -- it only came in dark colors, unless you painted it, and when the paint chipped the product looked shoddy. Tenite plastic, which was introduced by Kodak in the late twenties, was increasingly popular in the thirties, and had the advantage of being much lighter in weight and able to be molded in a range of colors. The View Master Model A, which came out in 1939, was made of Tenite and is about half the weight of the Model B.

The problem with Tenite is that it warps. Not just sometimes, but all the time -- the View Master Model A's were warping, often to the point of being unusable, within a couple of years of their manufacture. The Sawyers company tried to modify the design to minimize the warping, but all the modifications did was slow the problem, not eliminate it, and they finally gave up and switched to Bakelite in 1944. My Model A is less-severely warped than most, but the warpage is continuing to develop and it's become less and less usable over the time that I've had it.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm surprised that bakelite was seen as antiquated - is that by the '40s since it had been around for a few decades? I always assumed (without any evidence) that it was embraced as a "new" or "advanced" material, since it seemed so popular and since, at that time, we hadn't seen all the new materials that were to come.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bakelite goes back before WW1, so people were already well accustomed to it, and they'd been using celluloid even before Bakelite. The thirties saw an explosion of interest in other types of plastic -- aside from Tenite, you had Lucite, Beetleware, Catalin, Plexiglas, and various others. This 1940 Life article gives a good overview of the state of the plastics industry just before the war.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bakelite goes back before WW1, so people were already well accustomed to it, and they'd been using celluloid even before Bakelite. The thirties saw an explosion of interest in other types of plastic -- aside from Tenite, you had Lucite, Beetleware, Catalin, Plexiglas, and various others. This 1940 Life article gives a good overview of the state of the plastics industry just before the war.

Great article, thank you. Hard to believe that "plastics, Benjamin" was considered a product a young man should see as his future in the '60s since it had already been around for so long at that point.