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Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:07 am
by Fireminer
Didn't a good number of Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc. were released for stereoscopes like the View-Master? So I just wonder if there is anything like that with anime?

Re: Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2019 10:00 am
by davemerrill
I have a View-Master reel of Voltron images, I think that qualifies.

Japan had their own version of the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer that many Americans of a certain age remember fondly - https://flashbak.com/no-batteries-requi ... 973-49908/ - and I know there were some anime titles that had movie cartridge releases for the Japanese viewer.

Re: Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2019 5:23 am
by Fireminer
davemerrill wrote: Wed Nov 20, 2019 10:00 am I have a View-Master reel of Voltron images, I think that qualifies.

Japan had their own version of the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer that many Americans of a certain age remember fondly - https://flashbak.com/no-batteries-requi ... 973-49908/ - and I know there were some anime titles that had movie cartridge releases for the Japanese viewer.
Thanks! You mentioning the Movie Viewer actually remind me of a Doraemon toy commercial I saw long ago on Youtube. I try to find it again, and it really is something similar to the Movie Viewer, though it seems to have a battery! They even made a small TV for the reels (scroll to 4:16).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BZZBbzF2aE

Re: Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2019 10:32 am
by davemerrill
Speaking of those movie-viewers, the new Discotek BD of Voltes V has an extra that is Voltes V footage from one of the Japanese 8mm Film Viewer cartridges, complete with the clickety-click sound of the crank.

Re: Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2019 6:03 am
by Fireminer
Say, how likely would you find someone back in the 60s and 70s buy a small 8mm projector to watch movie at their home? I heard that before VHS, the only way you could watch a movie after its intial release was to search the newspaper to see if it was shown again at any cinema--was it true that the movie industry was hesistated to VHS at first because they feared the audience would not go to the cinema anymore?

Re: Anime for View-Master?

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2019 12:21 pm
by davemerrill
in the US there was a large market for 8mm and Super 8mm home movies from the 1940s up until the 1980s. Many companies made cameras and projectors for the home market and you could get the film developed anywhere that developed your regular camera film - the drugstore or the Fotomat kiosks in parking lots.

Companies like Castle Films built their entire business out of selling 8mm prints to the home market - shorts, edited down feature films, cartoons, etc. You could order them through mail-order catalogs and some retailers would also sell 8mm prints. Plaid Stallions has a pretty good article about home movies here: http://www.plaidstallions.com/castle/films.html

And of course people would shoot their own home movies of holidays, family gatherings, vacations, etc. For amateur film-makers in the early and mid 1980s 8mm was still a viable option for shooting your own epics. As VHS camcorders got cheaper, video tape eventually took over the home movie category, just as it took over every other category of visual entertainment.

You can still find 8mm projectors for sale very cheaply in thrift stores across America, and the 8mm movie reels of short subjects, cartoons, etc, are also out there waiting for anyone who wants Heckle & Jeckle or a really cut down version of "Planet Of The Apes."