Remember the View-Master?

Reading James’ blog post reminded me of the old View-Master. Remember that piece of magic toy from our childhood?

For the uninitiated, it’s small red plastic toy much like a binoculars. It usually came with 2 or 3 reels that you slot in at the top.

If you look through it at a light source, you will see a 3-d image – usually scenes from a cartoon or movie. Its a little like those magic eye puzzles, except you don’t need to strain your eyes to see it, and it comes in full glorious colour! If you slide the lever down, the pic changes and you see another stereoscopic picture! There usually were 7 different pics on one reel.

OK its pretty lame by today’s standards, but back in the day when we only had small plastic green soldiers and ‘daun terup’ to play with, this was almost magic. We, i didn’t have one of these View-Masters, but my pal Kit had one and he had like only 2 different reels, but boy, i never got tired of playing with it whenever i was at his house.

(oh look, fun for the whole family!)

Apparently, the simple yet amazingly fun product is still being produced and sold in today’s hi-tech world of Kinect and 3D games. You can check it out here.