View-Master Goes to War

Most of us remember the View-Master and its stereoscopic viewing reels as a toy. You dropped the reel in, pulled the lever, and saw cute 3-D pictures of cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny or epic live action images from hit shows and movies like Star Wars. But before it was a kids’ toy, the View-Master spent World War II teaching American servicemen how to recognize enemy targets.

A souvenir becomes a training tool

View-Master, however, didn’t start out as a military tool or a toy. It started as a way to promote tourism. Reels often showed far-off tourist destinations and major events. Unlike today, 3-D media was extremely rare, so the odds of seeing the Grand Canyon with 3-D depth or seeing 3-D views of something like the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco were very low. Thanks to the View-Master, though, those odds were never zero.

View-Master debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It was made by Sawyer's, a Portland, Oregon company best known for scenic postcards, which is why these reels started out as travel scenes for grown-ups, not cartoons for kids.

Then the United States entered World War II. The military quickly saw the usefulness of the View-Master as a relatively fast, inexpensive way to teach huge numbers of new recruits to tell friendly aircraft from enemy aircraft, and to judge how far away a plane was. A handheld 3-D viewer was just what they needed for showing images of these subjects with depth, which was likely closer to how they would look in real world scenarios. While the numbers are debated, it is clear that the U.S. military purchased around 100,000 Model B View-Masters (the simpler round versions) along with around 6 million reels between 1942 and 1945.

How the reels were used

The reels were made for the Navy’s aviation training program, and they were meant for self-study, so sailors could work through them on their own to learn airplane recognition and range estimation. There were two kinds: Study Reels for learning the aircraft, and Test Reels for checking what you’d learned. Many of the images had concentric circles printed over them to look like a gunsight, which let sailors practice judging how far away a plane was.

From the war back to the toy box

The war work paid off for Sawyer's: by the mid-1940s, View-Master was so well known that the company barely had to advertise. This publicity worked so well, in fact, that Sawyer’s actually managed to purchase their main competitor Tru-Vue, in 1951. This acquisition brought with it licensing agreements with Walt Disney Productions. With this purchase, the reels shifted toward Disney, cartoons and TV shows, and that's the View-Master most of us grew up with.    

For collectors

Wartime training reels are their own collectible category. They're said to usually be tan with a blue stamp, and some are marked as Bureau of Naval Personnel training aids. Complete sets with their original sleeves and test reels turn up at auction from time to time.

If you’re a fan of View-Master reels or toys, we invite you to check out our View-Master collectibles.