View-Master (always hyphenated) was introduced at the 1939 New York World's Fair as a "souvenir" by William Gruber, an avid photographer and organ maker from Portland, Oregon. Gruber took the old idea of the stereoscope and updated it with the new Kodachrome natural color film.
While visiting Oregon Caves, he met Harold Graves, president of Sawyer's Inc., a company that specialized in Edwin & Fred Mayer's photo-finishing greeting cards and postcards. They formed a company called "View-Master."
The View-Master was a successor to the stereograph viewer popularized in the 19th century by Oliver Wendell Holmes. View-Masters worked with color transparency film, called a Kodachrome, a 3-D (three-dimensional) pictorial taken by scenic photographers from all over, attached to a round single slide-like reel and rotate/stop with a click tab using a bakelite hand-held viewer with 2 round viewfinders for the eyes. Some View-Masters required users to face a light, others had batteries for built-in lighting. Over the years, there were various viewer styles such as a projector-like viewer (for group viewing rather than individual) and a hand-held "talking" viewer.
In 1951, View-Master acquired its competitor, Tru-Vue Co. of Rock Island, Illinois, which produced stereo views on 35mm film strips and held the license to use Disney characters and promoted the grand opening of Disneyland.
By 1957, 3-reel packets and a new numbering system was established, applying to packets rather than to the former single reels. The older single reels could be found in packets as late as the mid-1960s, until Sawyer's depleted their inventory.
In 1966, Sawyer's sold View-Master to General Aniline and Film Corporation (GAF). New packet designs reflected the change in ownership and the number of View-Master packet titles continued to expand, marking a shift from travel/scenic subjects to pop-culture entertainment media (movies, TV shows, cartoons).
In 1981, GAF sold View-Master to a group of investors headed by Arnold Thaler, and the company was reconstituted as the View-Master International Group (VMI). VMI replaced the venerable packet with a hanging blisterpack that had space for three reels, with no booklet in the packet.
VMI subsequently acquired the Ideal Toy Company in 1984 and became known as the View-Master Ideal Group. VM Ideal was eventually purchased by Tyco Toys in 1989. In March 1997, Tyco, including the View-Master Ideal Group, merged with Mattel Inc./Fisher-Price Inc.
View-Master products are currently manufactured in Mexico since being sold by the Portland, Oregon manufacturing plant in 1999. Reels started out at approximately 10 cents-25 cents each in department stores. Today, it sells for over $5.00 and can be found at Target, KMart, and toy stores. You can find nostalgic ones at flea markets, garage sales or online auctions. I believe that some recent decline in popularity and sales is due to the invention of the VCR.
I began collecting in the 1970s, after I received my first hand-held viewer and reels as Christmas gifts. My favorites in my collection are mainly the 1970s TV shows such as The Brady Bunch, Nanny & the Professor, The New Mickey Mouse Club; movies such as Pippi Longstocking, Mary Poppins and lots of Disney. Relatives have given me reels of New Hampshire, Vermont, etc., as far back as the 1950s. And, by the way, my viewer still has the little light bulb that works!
More Information
http://digbig.com/3egm
(catalog numeric listings/years, other history)
http://www.cinti.net/~vmmasell/welcome.html
(further history by the Sells, View-Master enthusiasts & collectors (see their book info. below), sample packets, detailed viewer models over the years, and various links)
Books
View-Master Viewers: An Illustrated History
by Mary Ann & Wolfgang Sell
http://www.cinti.net/~vmmasell/book.html
Collectible View-Master price-value Guide
by Brad & Julie Welsch
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967719704/auctionbytescom
Also for sale on http://www.vmreels.com, which features various links and viewers/reels for sale
