A few Saturdays ago I found myself off visiting antique stores while my wife was off coaching a math tournament and my son was home from college studying. At one stop I found a few bags full of old View-Master reels from the late 50s, with a Disneyland reel particularly catching my eyes. It had been awhile since I had given much thought to the View-Master, but when I was a kid I was fascinated by the 3D stereo images! My son, now 19, had gotten a little exposure to them about a dozen years ago when I had some custom made reels created from some family vacations for fun. He remembered me showing him some old ones that were my mother’s, including her View-Master projector and viewer. That following week while at my parent’s I dug them back out!

First, if you made it this far you PROBABLY know what a View-Master is, but just in case: the View-Master is a small hand held stereoscopic toy that lets viewers see 3D photographs while looking through the binocular-like device. 7 different images (14 pair to create the stereo effect) that are mounted on a circular disc, called a reel, and often a story book or other text coincides with the images and tells a story as the images are changed by pushing a lever on its side. The viewer was created in 1939 by William Gruber, and for decades it was made in Oregon and sold by a company called Sawyer’s, then GAF, and finally Mattel. Viewing stereo images was nothing new, but the compact, sturdy, and affordable View-Master viewer as well as the ability to change images while viewing was a big advancement to the hundreds of styles of popular handheld Stereoscopes of the mid to late 1800s to early 20th century. Over time there have been several dozens of versions of the viewer made of various Bakelite and plastics, and a few different projectors for the reels as well.

My Mom’s View-Master viewer is a beige Model G and her projector the model 30 Standard. The model G was produced between 1962-83, and her collection of reels spanned the mid to late 60s. There were a few dozen of them left, as well as some of my own reels from the late 70s and early 80s mixed in with hers.

Classic characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck are in her collection, as well as Adam West’s Batman. There are several dozen reels of tourist attractions, National Parks, various world cities, and other points of interest. Some of the most fascinating to me is the artwork on Mother Goose, Aesop’s Fable, and other reels were the use of physically sculpted dioramas were used to produce the images rather than simple animated cells or drawings. This style also was utilized in popular story reels featuring typically animated characters from Looney Tunes, Hanna Barbera, and more. As a child seeing these classic cartoons I grew to love in a more “realistic” way attracted me to them even more! The main clay diorama sculptors that View-Master used over the years were Florence Thomas, Joe Liptak, and Mary Lewis, among others.

Personally, one of my all-time favorites in my Mom’s collection is the set B492: Batman - "The Purr-fect Crime", staring Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar in the 1966 TV incarnation of Batman, Robin, and The Catwoman! This View-Master reel and watching reruns of the 1966 Batman TV series cemented my love for the Caped Crusader for life! Adam West is still my favorite Batman, and even now when I got this collection out of storage the first reels I went to were Batman through the View-Master projector!  

And about that Model 30 Standard projector… THE SMELL! As the small bluish 30 watt bulb heats up you can smell decade’s old dust burning and filling the air. I’ll forever associate that smell with this projector! While View-Master did make some projectors that were 3D, this 30 Standard is just a 2D model for showing on a screen, white wall, or in my case a white sheet when I was a little kid! The funny thing is I remember the image being projected to be MUCH larger and clearer, but heck decades ago we weren’t used to have high definition TV’s that were 60”, 70”, or larger in our homes. The sharpest and largest I could get this toy projector to display is probably 12-14” inches diagonally. But as a 4 or 5 year old boy, it was amazing. And it’s still dang cool today!

So now I’ve got something new to look for while cruising through antique stores and estate sales. I’ve already looked at the massive lists of available titles and there are several I’d like to get my hands on – the first being more vintage Disneyland and Walt Disney World park reels. And I’d like to see more of the Hanna Barbera and Looney Tune cartoons transformed into the beautiful clay dioramas, too! I am officially on the hunt! 

Questions? Comments? Email me at [email protected]