I remember one of the earliest toys I got for Christmas was a View-Master, a gadget that looked much like a pair of binoculars. A View-Master reel held 14 film transparencies in seven pairs, making up the seven stereoscopic images. The components of each pair were viewed simultaneously, one by each eye, thus simulating binocular depth perception.
If you held it up to a light, the images were vivid.
The first View-Masters came off the assembly line in 1939, but a few years later the invention of Kodachrome Film added an entirely new dimension. The first one I got had pictures of Washington, DC. The View-Masters were used extensively for travel and to promote an area, but they eventually settled in as a child’s toy.
Disney got in on the View-Master kick in the 1950s and soon was promoting and selling the famous cartoon characters to a willing market.
Plastic View-Masters are a popular toy even today as they are much less expensive and offer hundreds of visuals, not just a few.
I’d have to say that my View-Master was not a terribly exciting toy. Once you had clicked through all the photographs of Washington, DC a dozen times – well, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.
