Mattel brand executive Douglas Wadleigh said the company is betting on nostalgia and an appetite for collectibles.īut the device can work without reels and rely solely on app stores online. Mattel expects to sell the disks in $15 packs of four.
Select the floating images, and the software in the phone transports you to wherever you're going. Instead, you point your viewer at them, scan a unique design (like a QR code), and 3-D images pop up. In this new model, disks still carry content. The old version relied on thin, cardboard disks called "reels" that featured pairs of stereoscopic images on transparent film. Mattel isn't totally ditching the classic View-Master product design, though. Mattel executives wouldn't say what's next, but a fully explorable Barbie house and the experience of driving inside a blazing orange Hot Wheels race track are a natural fit, they said. Mattel is on a mission to keep its product line relevant to today's technological world, so expect brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Thomas to get digital treatment too someday. I tried out an early version of the product and traveled to San Francisco, the surface of the Moon, and I had a 3-D dinosaur sit on the palm of my hand and dunk its head into a raspberry. Mattel is also dusting off old stereoscopic images from its vast library, so you can see the Golden Gate bridge today - and back when it was just constructed in the 1940s. You can click on an item and learn more about it.