Long before smartphones and Google, it was not uncommon for people to purchase photo books, post cards, or even slides of locations from around the world. Tourist photos were popular with the invention of photography, but with the invention of stereo photography in the mid-19th century, the stereoscope became a popular way to view 3D images. The technology used two photographs of the same scene through a viewfinder that would trick the brain into seeing images in three dimensions. At first, this was a popular way to view famous locations from around the world. By the 1930s, however, the technology made its way to toys, and the View-Master was born in 1939. A plastic viewer and cardboard disks with images allowed children to view images from around the world, and later, from their favorite shows. In the late 1970s, a View-Master disk set for M*A*S*H was released for the episode Major Topper (06×24). After a brief overview of the View-Master system, we will explore this View-Master set from 1978.
Launched in 1939, the View-Master was a revolutionary toy that brought stereographic images to the masses. The plastic viewer and cardboard disks weren’t as costly to produce as early stereographic image viewers and sets. This made the View-Master not only popular with children, but adults as well. This is likely why a network television show like M*A*S*H authorized View-Master disc sets. The toy worked by having two images of each scene on the disc so that they aligned in the viewer so your left and right eye saw two separate images. However, your brain would put the images together in a way that added depth. This gave the scenes on the disk a 3D quality. The 3D images, decent prices, and wide variety of disks available made the View-Master a very popular item by the late 1970s.
I was surprised to learn that there was a M*A*S*H View-Master disk set. I had a View-Master as a kid, and I remembered the sets I had were landscapes or physical locations. What I like about the M*A*S*H View-Master set is that it isn’t a collection of photos of the actors from the show. They could have easily cobbled together a collection of press photos of the cast and made a disk or two with those photos, and that likely would have sold well. Instead, the View-Master disks tell the story of the episode “Major Topper.” The package included 3 disks, a story booklet, and an order form for other View-Master disk sets. The story booklet tells the story of the episode and tells you which corresponding image from the included disks to view as you read the story. The interactivity of the story with the View-Master viewer and disks is a very clever way to get kids to read and interact with the toy. Looking at this specific set of disks, sadly, they suffer from a very common issue of photo slides from this era, they’ve turned red. As the cyan dyes fade, the red dye remains leaving a reddish hue. It is hard to find older View-Master disks that don’t suffer from this because in order to survive with accurate colors, they would have had to have been stored in a dark, cool, low humidity location.
By the late 1970s, the number of licensed products for M*A*S*H grew to match the popularity of the series. It was not surprising that the company behind View-Master would want to create a disk set for the series. Judging by the number of disk sets for M*A*S*H available online at any given time, they must have produced a fair number of them. Today, View-Master is still around! It is now owned and operated by the toy giant, Mattel and has ventured into virtual reality. As I mentioned, the M*A*S*H disk sets are available online as pre-owned objects, and I have even seen several available that are still sealed in their original packaging! View-Master viewers are also widely available online, and they are a unique collectable to add to your M*A*S*H collection.
The M*A*S*H Historian 