The Viewmaster
I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you. I fucking loved the Viewmaster.
Aside from just having a really badass sounding name, the design of the thing was awesome, and even more awesome was the design of the reels you put into it. Somewhere between photo negatives and film reels, these things just had such a neat retrofuturism to them that nothing else has really ever managed to achieve in the same way. But, all that being said, the Viewmaster as a toy? Fucking weird as hell.
There seemed to be an influx of "toys" at one point that were both semi educational and also just a toy. Things like the Speak 'N Spell or [insert other educational toy here], stuff like that, you know? And I'm all for teaching kids while they're playing, lord knows an education is important, but of all the ones like that, the Viewmaster has to be the weirdest, because it's not really "educational", it's more just...boring? It's like looking at pictures in a book without an actual book being present. Or like television, if none of the images ever moved. But they don't really teach you anything, and a lot of the reels you could buy were simply just screenshots straight out of films, almost like a visual novelization, and there's sure as shit not "educational".
Getting kids to sit still is hard enough, but getting kids to sit still and focus on something? Almost impossible. And I'm not sure exactly how the people behind the Viewmaster imagined their "toy" would work in that way. I mean, like I said, it's not super thrilling. They're pictures. You're looking at pictures, and often times, grainy cropped pictures at that, simply because of the resolution and the scope available on the reel. Listen, I love this fucking thing, okay, I made that extremely clear right out the gate, but if I had to describe the Viewmaster in one word, "Fun" would not be that word.
The Viewmaster was actually created in 1939, believe it or not, four years after the advent of Kodachrome color film made the use of small, high quality photographic color images practical. Tourist attractions and travel views were predominant in the early reels, which I suppose one could theoretically claim is "educational", but man is it a stretch to call it that. For a brief summation of the toys history, I will now simply cut/paste directly from the Wikipedia article because I am indeed that lazy and don't want to type it all.
The other thing to take into consideration, and my personal favorite part of this, is that the damn thing was technically introduced at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, marked "patent applied for", and was originally intended as an alternative for the scenic post card, which now makes a lot of those reels make a lot more sense, honestly, given that they were about tourist locations and whatnot. So how did it wind up going from the New York Worlds Fair to being considered a kids toy? Well, through many many MANY acquisitions of company after company, and changing their material for it from bakelite to plastic, it eventually fell into the hands of a company called Tyco, who then merged with Mattel in 1997. Between that and the decisions made by various owners here and there to begin producing reels featuring Hanna Barbara and Disney characters, the damn thing really got itself stuck in the kids section once and for all. Eventually, in 2008, the "scenic" reels were phased out altogether in favor for things like animated character reels and whatnot, though thankfully someone else worked out a deal with Mattel to keep making them.
I'm pleased to say, too, that Viewmaster is still around.
About two years ago, my girlfriend and I, on a whim, walked into a Toys 'R Us, and while just browsing, we found the section where the Viewmasters were shelved, and holy shit did these things get advanced, now leaning even more heavily into VR territory. Which, doesn't really surprise when you think about it, honestly. The thing really was kind of the first VR there was, in a way. It was truly ahead of its time and a predecessor that deserves to be recognized in that field, I think. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to last too long, because in 2019 they stopped producing the VR version of the Viewmaster. I mean, the fucking things name starts with a V for god sakes, how much more synergy do you need? There's even talks now to develop a feature film about the toy, and honestly, if that happens, they BETTER release some reels with shots of that feature film for the Viewmaster. That would bring it all full circle.
One of the really cool things, however, is that despite all the changes, all the different variations of Viewmasters over the years, is that they ensured that every single reel would work even on the latest model. So if you have a stack of reels from 1956 or something, they'll still work today in a brand new Viewmaster, and in a world that's constantly taking away physical media from people (though I shudder to consider Viewmaster reels "media" by any stretch of the imagination), that's actually a pretty cool thing. You will never be locked out of that content, as long as you have it. I dig that. It's in fact part of the national Toy Hall of Fame, and I think that's fair, even if calling it a "toy" is kind of...questionable, as a toy insinuates the existence of fun when using it.
You can still buy Viewmasters, and hell you can find all sorts of packs of reels on eBay, including, and this isn't a joke as you'll see from my screenshot below, a reel for Buckaroo Bonzai of all things.
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