View-Master

[Fading Fast]

Just flipped through more pages of the Life magazine you linked to - great story on "white-collar girls" like in the movie "Kitty Foyle." Paint a not glamorous - but not horrible - picture of young women who work in offices in big cities. Interesting how the magazine says they take these jobs until they "settle into marriage or a career." Also, some great accompanying photographs (no shock, it is "Life" after all).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Typical Luce publication editorial slant. Note the opening sentence of the Plastics article. Get stuffed, Henry.

 

[ChiTownScion]

When I was a kid I owned a View- Master projector. It didn't have a cooling fan and I remember it becoming extremely hot after a short time of use.

 

[LizzieMaine]

According to the catalog that came with my viewer, those projectors were to be an "Exciting Postwar Innovation." I was always disappointed by them as a kid, because you didn't get the 3-D effect.

 

[Fading Fast]

Typical Luce publication editorial slant. Note the opening sentence of the Plastics article. Get stuffed, Henry.

Yes I did and thought, man, different time as that is really rude. That said, I was surprised a career was even mentioned as an option for women - as noted in my earlier post.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Read Elizabeth Hawes and Marjorie Hillis, among others -- they were actively promoting career-oriented lives for women well before the war. Interesting fact: you could earn a "Business Woman" proficiency badge in the Girl Scouts in 1922. That generation of girls didn't grow up satisfied to be meek little housewives.

 

[Stearmen]

According to the catalog that came with my viewer, those projectors were to be an "Exciting Postwar Innovation." I was always disappointed by them as a kid, because you didn't get the 3-D effect.

Now that I think about it, 3-D was probably why, as a kid, I liked the Stereoscope so much more then the View-Master!

 

[emigran]

Just the name VIEWMASTER meakes me smile... I Believe I had one that wasn't even battery operated you had to hold it up to a light... Then we got the "plastic" one with batteries
I have such great memories of reel after reel of Roy Rogers, Disneyland, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Tom and Jerry cartoons We had boxes of reels and it was a reel-rainy-day-ritual for us as kids. In 1956 my grandparents had their 50th anniversary and there were double image 3D Viewmaster slides of the party and their new Buick in vivid colr that I can still see in my mind...

Great thread, thanks

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Sawyers company used to offer that service -- you took your own 3-D photos and they'd process them into custom View Master reels. Those turn up occasionally in accumulations of reels, and are even more interesting than the commercially-released ones.

 

[Randy]

I have a moderate sized collection of viewers and reels even now - View-Master was my favorite toy as a kid and when ebay hit the scene I started buying up all the reels I never had as a kid. View-Master is what led me to photography (as well as stereo photography) and while I have a modest stereograph collection as well, View-Master is the one and only, at least for me. I mean, you could go amazing places and it was (almost) like you were really there. I've spent way more hours gazing through a View-Master viewer than I could ever count.

- R

 

[Benzadmiral]

I picked up the "Man from U.N.C.L.E." Viewmaster packet in the late '60s. They'd chosen "The Very Important Zombie Affair," and CBN never showed that one in the '80s. So it was the only episode that I got to see (sort of) in color until the DVDs came out.

"Star Trek" was represented by "The Omega Glory," that Roddenberry story about the Yangs and the Kohms, featuring Bill Shatner's impassioned reading of the Preamble to the Constitution. I expect GR probably insisted on that one so he'd get the royalties from VM purchasers. I wonder how the U.N.C.L.E. episode was chosen.

Anyway, for someone who didn't have a color TV as a kid, the VM reels were cool.

 

[DesertDan]

I loved my View-Master, it was one of my most cherished toys. I had a whole shoebox full of reels. Sadly I do not know whatever became of it.

 

[BriarWolf]

Oh man, talk about a blast from the past. My sister and I were both given ViewMaster viewers as kids, along with my Dad's reel collection and projector. Shame the projector died on us some time back, and the cells are falling out of the cards on some of reels so I avoid handling them, but now I've gotta go dig 'em out again for old times sake...