How far things have come

My two daughters are forever asking for stories from my youth.  As long as they want to hear them, I’ll happily play along. I enjoy the challenge of finding things that might interest them, and tonight I found something that fit the bill.

With Christmas upon us, they wanted to know what toys were like when I was their age.  A toy I focused in on was one from Fisher-Price (shown above), which was a sort of hand-held movie player which needed these yellow cartridges inserted into it. You turned the crank manually,  and a short film loop played before your eyes.  A long way from a streaming ipad, I realize, but cool enough for the 1970s, I suppose.

I remember that we had a couple of Disney cartridges, but my favorite one played the introduction to the Six Million Dollar Man. I watched it again and again, happy that I could see it somewhere other than on the television. For more on this toy, please check out Retroland.com, and my thanks to them for the image above.

As I said before, it pales in comparison to what today’s devices can do. I would have looked at you funny if you tried to explain these devices to me back then. But having to explain this gift to my daughters, and getting quizzical looks in response, felt like progress of some sort.