Toy Cameras

By a random impulse I decided to buy a German photography magazine (from a second-hand bookshop) just because it had a few nice pictures in it. And then I decided to shamelessly share a spread I thought was interesting from the magazine here. Toy cameras!

This spread was published in fotoMAGAZIN Nr. 2 February 2015.

The cameras introduced in the pages of the magazine seem only to be a small selection of the many toy/novelty cameras that are further explored in a book of 239 pages named Crazy Camera: 150 Coole Gadgets or simply as Camera Crazy in English by authors Christopher Salyers and Maynard/Buzz(?) Poole. I don't know which came first the English or the German publication. The German version credits Maynard Poole as the second author and the English book credits Buzz Poole. Go and figure.

The first thing that jumped out to me is, of course, the Freeza's Spaceship camera! I must have it! *__* Well no, I'm not going to buy it, but it sure looks cool! The He-Man camera also looks really cool with it's castle design. They all look very playful and unique and look at those colors!
The only camera I have seen in real life out of these is the Pokémon one. Back in elementary school, one boy in my class had that one. I never saw what kinds of photos it took, but I have a faint memory of seeing an advertisement for the camera in a kid's magazine we got at home. I think you could switch between 3 different Pokémon patterns that would frame you photo once you develop it. I don't know, I might remember it wrong!

Now when I think about it, I had some novelty cameras as a kid, one shaped as a penguin and another one with four lenses which sounds strange. I haven't seen them in years, but there's a chance they are still up in the attic in some boxes. Let me go check it out....Nope! Found neither of them! 

But luckily I found this page which has pictures of the two cameras I was speaking of.

http://www.jko-cameracollection.fi/muut.html and also http://junkstorecameras.com/pokemoncamera.htm had a dozen of pictures that showed the frame of the Pikachu camera. So apparently I remembered it wrong, silly me.

So, I didn't find my "Pepsodent Xperience" camera, but I did find two photos taken with it to show you. Everything shifts a bit in every "frame". It's very noticeable in the picture with the grey pony. In the pictures on the top row you can't see my head, but on the lower row you can see half of my head. Going through other photos taken with this camera, they were all really dark, despite that most of the pictures were taken outdoors in natural daylight. I guess you can't have too high expectations for a camera you get for free after buying some toothpaste!

Now for the last part. I do have a Star Wars camera I believe belongs here in the same category with the rest of them. A camera shaped after the Battle droid's electrobinoculars as seen in the Phantom Menace. You can choose to "super-impose" Qui-Gon, Jar Jar, Anakin, Amidala, Obi-Wan or Maul onto your photo, so says the packaging. I'm curious how well this camera would work, but to try it out, I'd have to remove it from the box, which I don't want to! Old school film roll cameras are going extinct, so if I'm ever going to try it out it should be sooner rather than later.

If you've been following this blog for a longer time, you can guess who's binoculars I'd rather have in my collection from the same movie. <3