View-Master

When I was a child my maternal grandparent's had a View-Master. I remember thinking it was a pretty lame toy. Nostalgia does funny things to people. When I saw an old View-Master with four old reels in a plastic bag marked $1.49, I bought it.

I thought I was buying it for the artwork in the little books that accompanied the reels but when I got home and viewed them something like magic happened. The wand of nostalgia waved over the 3-D images and suddenly, they were cool. I showed them to my five-year-old and she thought they were was the coolest thing on the planet.

I researched the history of the toy and it became even cooler. Tim Walsh, who wrote the book Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them, said it best:

“It is a visual toy, but its sounds are so distinctive; the windshield wiperish swoosh of the reel advancing, the echoey clack of plastic when your fingers slips off the lever, the hollow reverberations of the hidden spring. The sound I like best though are the “Oohs” and “Aahs” that come from my seven-year-old when she slides a new reel in and looks out her window to the world”

To find out more about the View-Master, read the article: View-Master: Life in 3-D.