Regardless of what ViewMaster products are or are not on the market, do you really think that there wont be a product tie in… Really?

Seriously, Target & Wal-Mart will be full of them. There will be kids meal premiums and they will sell them to anyone willing to buy them.

And people will buy them because they wont be your father’s ViewMaster.

Prepare to be seduced by the new electronic “ViewMaster VR” that displays digital 3D images and video with sound in a virtual reality environment. It will link to other network aware devices, nodes and external storage via BlueTooth, USB, FireWire & Ethernet, have integrated accelerometers, WiFi and GPS functionality as well as memory card expansion slots. There will be ports for audio/video input/output and game controller peripherals.

Expect an “HD” version of the unit, as well as “Pro” and “Pro HD” camera versions that will capture still and moving 2D/3D images with sound and geodata tagging within a year. The Pro units will also boast live WebCam functionality.

My engineers are working on a prototype unit based on an Open Source embedded Linux distribution. Obviously, we can’t call ours a ViewMaster but our market research has shown substantial interest in what would be a VR iPod/PSP/NDS on steroids. Google passed on the idea and we never heard back from Apple so it’s going to take us a bit longer without the funding.

I would agree with you except, from articles I’ve read, ViewMaster takes up a lot of shelf space, but sells only about $10M a year compared to almost $6 billion in revenue by Mattel’s other products. They recently discontinued one of the most productive uses for it, scenic discs, such as those sold at the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone Park. In another article, a 3 -year old child, told his mother that he found the ViewMaster boring. I’m not surprised when many of todays 3 & 4 years olds are already exposed to the interactive internet, video games and of course every Disney film on DVD or iPod on demand in the backseat of Daddy’s car. Besides, in an era where NBC can broadcast an episode of Chuck in 3D, how much longer can the traditional View Master be relevant, when 3D images can be seen on the internet with a cheap pair of glasses?

So product placement? Really? Who exactly are they targeting? Two-and-a half year olds who still find ViewMasters entertaining? Nostalgic Baby Boomers who grew up on ViewMasters? Collectors? Or is it one last attempt to squeeze every last dollar out of the product before Mattel discontinues it completely?

Clearly this is not just going to be a kid’s film … as most kids don’t have any idea what a View Master is anymore and if they do, will most likely be repelled from such a movie out of boredom. No this will appeal more to families and like a Pixar movie probably have a strong story to appeal to adults’ nostalgia. I mean it has to, right?

Nope. Perhaps you misread what I wrote – I never wrote they were writing it.

Closettrekker wrote: Is agreeing to produce a kid adventure movie that involves the “view-master toy” really something which requires compromising one’s principles?

Definitely the mis-reading problem is yours. Nowhere in the article is a “kid adventure movie” mentioned.

As for compromising one’s principles, once again you’ve read into that. Everyone in Hollywood decides what kind of career they’re going to have. Orci & Kurtzan appear to already be accepting the role as the toy franchise guys. If that’s what they want, fantastic, then there’s no compromise. However, there are some writers and actors alike who will not take on a project that doesn’t accomplish a vision they have for their careers, even if it means making less money. It’s hard to imagine a writer/producer with the opportunities available to Orci/Kurtzman who wants to pursue both Star Trek and Transformers.

However, I did not say that’s what they’ve done. They could just as likely be the most talented writer’s in Hollywood and have an amazing vision for an idea this ridiculous.

The number of Bad Robot KoolAid drinkers and Kurtzman/Orci lap dogs have diminished considerably.

It’s interesting that so many are so quick to defend ViewMaster canon & integrity but were absent when it was time to do so for Star Trek.

This idea sounds as original as a retreaded Twilight Zone episode. Perhaps it will be a sequel to “Big” with Tom Hanks… Instead of a magic wish machine it will have a magic ViewMaster. Can’t forget the all important product placement.

Maybe it will also star Brad Pitt and be called The Curious Case of Forrest Gump and his Magical ViewMaster.

“Dateline: Hollywood, California.

As of Monday morning, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” had made six-hundred-and-eight million dollars at the box office. And this is a movie that critics have described as “beyond bad”, “a horrible experience of unbearable length”, and “the equivalent of a one-hundred-and-fifty minute waterboarding session”. So clearly, what the public wants and what certain people believe the public should want are vastly different things.

Which leads me to an apology. On Tuesday night, we told you that Universal Studios had bought the film rights to the video game “Asteroids” — a project that will be produced, incidentally, by the one of the producers of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”.

Clearly, that producer sees that the films of the future will be storyless, characterless, beginningless, and endless. Like “Waiting for Godot” directed by an impatient twelve-year-old, and with the parts of Vladimir and Estragon played by giant robots with lasers for eyes.”

Thank you CBC. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

We mentioned several other odd-sounding projects on Tuesday as well. But here’s the apology: we neglected to mention that DreamWorks Pictures is negotiating with Mattel for the rights to the View-Master. That’s the toy, introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, into which one inserts a disc that contains seven pictures. When one looks through the dual eyeholes, one sees those pictures in three-D. And soon, “View-Master: The Movie” will animate those pictures, or pit View-Masters against one another, or something.

If such a movie seems weird, or destined to fail, consider this: the two writers who’ve already been hired to work up some kind of script also served as writers on a little toy-based film entitled “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. So if you’re taking deep breaths in disappointment at the future desecration of your childhood, remember this: when it comes to summer movies, size means everything — and your sighs mean nothing.

My jaw just hit the floor…

And the reason it was done that way is simple: to get the Viewmaster 3D effect, they had to shoot with special stereo cameras. That was back when Sawyers/GAF actually sent their own camerapeople onto the sets of TV shows they were doing (which is why it was OMEGA GLORY — not because it was the best episode, but because it was the one that happened to be filming the week the Viewmaster cameraman was in the studio). The shots of the Enterprise and Exeter used in the actual episode weren’t new miniature footage, but rather recombinations of existing footage, and so there was no way to get the 3D effect from the existing opticals; Viewmaster redid the shot from scratch, and it actually is quite gorgeous. Think of it as the very first example of Star Trek Remastered. ;)

Later, Viewmaster reels were done on the cheap; the ST:TMP set is an example. They’d use stills from the movie — two or three split-screened, so that the stills were at different focal depths, but weren’t themselves three-dimensional.

I remember the last Christmas present my grandfather gave me, a bunch of ViewMaster disks, one was the TAS disk and many were of Ocean things because My grandfather like the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea TV show. He passed away just before Turkey Day in 1973 when his heart stopped on his way to a Vikings Coaching Staff meeting.

Deja Vu. I remember spending many an evening at the Elwood Public Library as a child looking in wonder at those even-then old pictures with the stereoscope device.

I like to collect old stuff from my childhood and that would be a great thing to look for on EBay! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!