Collector's Corner
So this is a page focusing solely on something fun, namely View-Masters, the 3-D toy of yore, popular from the 1940s until its ebb in the 1980s and eventual complete decline by the end of the 2000s. However, in those 60ish years many reels of different countries and cities and places therein, were issued. Also films, cartoons and TV shows as well as things of general visual interest; circus, rodeos, races, wild flowers, marine animals, you name it. I’ve been collecting for years and have a vast collection, and I thought I’d share a few examples of things that might interest you. I’m not working on anything View-master related (I wish!) but it’s something I enjoy, and I would it would be fun to show.
Collector's note
One of the things I do from time to time is take the 1980s-onward blister packets and do new… or I should say “old” packets with the reels of those sets. Blister packets were something Toys “R” Us suggested for better in-store placement and sales, which I guess maybe worked for a time, although opening them and storing them were a drag due to their shape and design. And the graphics of those designs? Forget it. Terrible. The picture choices were sometimes so bafflingly bad, you’d think the designers had a betting pool going on how quickly they could drive View-Master out of business by creating an unappealing product.
So what I’ve been doing is creating fake S3 packet for these blister reel sets to keep them in. That way I can store them along with all the countless packets I have in this old envelope form. The S3 packet design was an earlier design I’ve always liked and it’s fun to choose the image and the packet covers, then print it and assemble the printed sheet into a finished envelope.
Here’s an example of what I mean. This is the blister pack of the wonderful Rocketeer film from the early 90s (great 3-D btw). See what I mean about the design?
Now, this is what I did, following the original layout and word choices of an S3 packet from the 1950s:
So I’ll be sharing more of my redesigns from time to time as well as other articles and interesting stuff about my hobby. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this and maybe some of you will even become collectors yourself.
Entries
I have a lot of these. At least sundry models A through F (I lost interest in collecting the models when they switched from the lovely bakelite-like plastic to the bland grey plastic versions that followed (model G...
I thought I’d include this, to show you how insane I can get over View-Masters. Although I’m certain that few of you have a burning design to see how View-Master packet designs evolved over the years, I nevertheless...
An example of taking a later blister pack and redesigning it into an earlier View-Master sleeve format.
A brief note on what makes View-Masters so appealing as objects, toys, and tiny time machines.
