The View-Master

When I was a kid of about 7 years old, I had a View-Master.

For those of you who don’t know, a View-Master was a device used for viewing slides of photos and giving them a 3D effect. The device looked like a pair of small binoculars that you would hold up to your eyes, look toward a source of light, and view the slides on a disk inserted into the device. Slides on the disk for the same view were mounted on the opposite sides of the disk. The slides on either side of the disk were of the same image, but with a slightly off perspective to give the viewer a 3D effect image. You would pull down a lever on the device and the disk would rotate to reveal the next set of slides. There was a brief description of each set of slides on the disk.

The first View-Masters were produced in the 1940’s and were well known and mass-produced but the 1970s when I got mine.

The View-Master in the images below are not the View-Master I had as a kid, but another version of the one I had. You can see on the box below the version I had. The one shown here is an earlier version View-Master and the only one we still have now.

I recently came across our View-Master box stored in a home closet, and subsequently went for a walk down memory lane. The View-Master still worked and I viewed dozens of images I hadn’t seen in many years.

The View-Master came with a set of slides and you could purchase other sets separately.

My View-Master was a Charlie Brown View-Master and included a set of Charlie Brown comic character theme slides. Here are a couple of my favorite images from that set — Snoopy as a fighter pilot ace who dreamed of fighting his nemesis, The Red Baron.

There were also slide cards of the Grand Canyon and other exotic places. There were slide cards of the Wonders of the World. There were slide cards of old TV shows including early scenes of Happy Days, Flipper, Julia, and Wonderbug, a Saturday morning kid TV show from the early 70’s about a dune buggy and it’s owner and friends.

One of my favorites was a slide of photos from Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp – a Saturday morning TV show about a secret agent chimpanzee in which they dressed up chimps in clothes, and narrated a story and did sound voice overs of the chimps talking out the script. It was funny to watch as a kid and fun to remember simpler days of fun memories as an adult. Here is one of the slides of Lancelot Link and his female chimp sidekick Mata Hairy.

It was fun to take a walk down memory lane with my View-Master, and I thought it would be nice to share the memories with you.

If you had a View-Master too, leave a Comment below with your View-Master memories, and share which slides you remember viewing in it.