US toy firm Mattel is going to club hands with search engine giant Google to revamp its age-old View-Master for users in the 21st century.
The original View-Master was introduced in the year 1939. It was a noble attempt by Mattel at creating a binocular three-dimensional (3-D) virtual reality headset. It has a set of sliding thin cardboard disks that contained stereoscopic photos into a plastic device, which were looked via a viewfinder.
According to the toy company, the revamped View-Master would resemble a very well-known toy of the mid-20th century. The developers say the new View Master would come with a red plastic body, having a side lever that would allow switching between images. The most important element of the View-Master of 2015 is that it would use an Android smartphone instead of disks having static images. This will offer the users with a 360-degree view of animated world.
The working of the new View-Master will be based on a custom Mattel app. Moreover, any other app that is compatible with Google’s Cardboard, a low-end 3D virtual reality headset, can be used to run View Master.
El Segundo-based Mattel will also be selling different reels that will take the user into a unique world having an augmented reality environment which is based on the subject of the reel, such as San Francisco, Dinosaur Adventure and Solar System.
The new View-Master will come with a price tag on USD 29.99 and is expected to go on sale this fall. It would also include a sample reel and the users can buy additional three-pack reels at the cost of USD14.99.
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