For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an interest in traveling, and recently I’ve been thinking about why that is so. I’ve concluded that a toy that we had at our house–the View Master–is at least partly responsible for my travel itch.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the View Master was a plastic, goggle-like device that you put up to your eyes. You inserted a round photo circle into a designated slot, then toggled down a lever to advance the photos, one by one. The cool thing about the View Master was that it allowed you to look at the photos in a three-dimensional way, giving some depth to the pictures.
Of course, the View Master didn’t produce photos of your family, your house, or your friends. Instead, its photo circles inevitably were of faraway destinations or the natural wonders of the world, richly colored and exotic and much different from daily life in Akron, Ohio. The View Master world was one of men in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats and women in dirndls dancing in a square in some quaint medieval town, the Arc de Triomphe surrounded by headlights at night, or scenes from Yosemite National Park.
The View Master’s core message was that there was a big, amazingly interesting world out there, just waiting to be seen by you with your own two eyes. I got that message. My favorite View Master circle was one on American national parks, and when our family decided to take a driving trip west in 1967 or 1968, I wanted to see in person some of what the View Master had shown me–and once I saw the Grand Canyon and Old Faithful, I was hooked, and ever since I’ve wanted to see more.
Like many toys of that era, the View Master was simple, but it definitely had an impact.
Webner House 