View-Master Is Now the Master of Me

I never had a View-Master when I was a kid, and I never particularly wanted one. My friends had them, but the few times I had used them I was unimpressed. The only reel I can clearly remember seeing was of Robin Hood, and looking at it now I can understand why I found it less than compelling, since it featured 1970s-era photographs of badly coifed men in tights. Yes, they were in 3d, but the whole world around me was in 3d (and there was a comforting lack of bestockinged gentlemen sporting pageboys in my immediate vicinity).

When I unwrapped one of my Christmas presents from Davis last month, you can imagine the forced smile that I pasted up when I saw that it contained two View-Master viewers and around 50 reels. great.
I took a look at a couple of the reels in an attempt to feign enthusiasm.
Holy-crap! I had no idea some of them were so cool!

Most of the reels are from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Yes, some of them are boring, but some of them are absolutely incredible. My favorites are the dioramas. They're like these amazing little alternate universes that seem almost real due to the 3d-ity. After seeing these and the diorama-like lentographs I've been collecting, I'm now so obsessed that I want to start making my own little Petulaverses. Turns out my boy knew me better than I knew myself.

I used our slide scanner to capture the images on the reels so I could show them to you, although you'll have to imagine the three dimensional part.
Here are some pictures from the 1963 version of Goldilocks:
(warning: angry bears look very scary)