They don’t know it, but my kids are spoiled when it comes to media.
Thing 2 (the 5-year-old) is a pro when it comes to finding and streaming movies and TV shows over the Internet and onto the HDTV downstairs, and when we went to visit my parents in Kentucky last weekend, Thing 1 (the 11-year-old) rode shotgun and watched “iCarly” and 1998 remake of “The Parent Trap” on her iPod. (Oh, Lindsey, what happened?)
I realized just how spoiled my kids are once we got to Kentucky and I was going through some boxes and found my Six Million Dollar Man Movie Viewer.
The Movie Viewer was like a ViewMaster for movies. You popped in a cartridge, looked through the eyepiece and turned a crank to watch a 60-second, Super 8mm-loop with scenes from “The Six Million Dollar Man.”
For anyone who doesn’t know, “The Six Million Dollar Man” was a TV show about an astronaut named Steve Austin, who loses both legs, an arm and an eye in a horrific plane crash. The government decides to rebuild him, to make him better than he was … better, stronger, faster.
According to The Bionic Wiki, the Movie Viewer came out in ’75. VCRs were out then but were crazy expensive, so this was really the only way a 9-year-old could watch “The Six Million Dollar Man” whenever he wanted.
Trust me. That was pretty cool at the time.
And everything was in glorious red! Even stuff that shouldn’t have been.
Eh, it looks better in person.
We loved the “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bionic Woman.” I love that your parents still had your viewer!
Today, we’re dealing with a $35 bill generated by 12-year-old Hope subscribing to a download site on her cellphone without our permission…I suspect she asked me if she could “download a ringtone” and didn’t see the small print about the $10/month subscription! Sigh…
Wendy
It coulda been worse, Wendy. I’ve heard of kids running up hundreds of dollars in charges!
Wow – how did I miss that viewer? We used to get all kinds of gadgety things like that – maybe my siblings and I were just a bit too old to ask for it (my sister and I were in high school in 75 and my brothers were in junior high). I loved my Viewmaster when I was a kid.
I remember there were Star Wars cartridges, and, according to bionic.wikia.com, some Bionic Woman cartridges, too. Just imagine: 60 whole seconds of random clips from a TV show or movie, and we thought that was pretty neat. (I just remembered there was a Fisher-Price version that played clips from Disney cartoons.)
Hey — I still find this cool. It beats the pants off of my viewmaster.
I always wanted a talking ViewMaster. I thought that would be cool.
I had one of those that somebody tossed out. Since I only had the two cartridges that were with it, I was limited to Winnie the Pooh floating away in a flood (in a honey pot) and something I didn’t recognize at the time (was quite limited on “entertainment” for kids, like I didn’t “know” Dr. Seuss or Disney). It was awesome!
I just checked, and if you hurry, there’s a Fisher-Price movie viewer and 4 movies for sale on eBay. Bidding closes in 2 hours, and, right now, it’s going for $1.25, so, you know, you could buy a Coke, or bid to get 4 minutes worth of old Disney cartoons.
How cute! Well, I’m saving up for a 2T external hard drive, so it’ll go towards that!
Things sure have changed.
Ain’t it the truth.
Steve Austin just karate-chopped that guy’s head clean off!! Cool!
I remember how I loved my little 45 records that you would listen to along with reading the book and the record would tell you when to turn the page. I wore out “The Haunted Mansion” one. Good times.
That wasn’t a guy. It was a robot, an evil, evil robot. I remember Steve Austin (astronaut, a man barely alive) fighting a lot of robots. Also, he met Bigfoot once. Looking back, it wasn’t a great show.
I remember those viewers, though I never had one myself. It’s amazing how much things have changed. Things were so much simpler back in the dark ages.
I’m beginning to understand why my parents are so befuddled when it comes to technology. This is really science fiction as far as they’re concerned.