A dimly lit memory - The Corgi Movie Vision (updated 17/2/21)

The "power" of an incandescent bulb is somewhat misleading; 90% of that would've been dissipated as heat whereas with a LED bulb it's the opposite, 90% is light, If want to make it much brighter, you would need to use a Cree style LED with a series resistor and, while there's plenty of power from an external supply to run a 3W or 5W LED, those can get quite hot and would require some sort of heat-sink, all of which adds up to considerable modding of the lamp holder. Still, if it's worth doing...

Hey Mat! Sorry to ask a question unrelated to the video but I was watching an old one of yours and you were using the Pono player. The synapse in my brain awoke a long dormant memory of when that was hyped to be the best music player ever. I was just wondering since you got other music players after that, what your opinion of the Pono was? Did you find to be overhyped or did you just move on because it was bulky? Also, dont forget to talk about hip hop in an oddcast : )

Saw the latest update, and I believe you've got all bases covered. In fact, I think the added sections transformed the video from "Techmoan" to "Techmoan+"! 👍

Absolutely loved this - a device that just missed me back in the day and I would have really, really wanted. A nice one for my first Patreon video!

This bulb supplier seems to have the right MES Lens end bulb for this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MES-Miniature-Edison-Screw-Bulb-E10-1-2v-1-5-2-2-2-5-3-5v-6v-12-14-24V-OM0311/391990963470?hash=item5b447b6d0e:g:u3cAAOSwmZdaluu2

Oh gosh, I have one of those manual Movie Masters in the basement as well! Got 3 or 4 of the films. They were a bit of fun at the time, but pretty much museum pieces now. Hardly practically useful as a way to watch films. :D IIRC I have the Robin Hood "Match of the Century" and "Mickey's Caravan" as well as a couple of others which I forget just now. For the youngsters wondering why such a thing would be interesting at all back in the day, not only did we not have smartphones, we didn't have VCRs or anything for playing back video at the time. You just had what was on the telly.

This was a pretty cool video. I bet a devoted person could create this own media for this device too. I'd guess it would not make the most impressive obsolete media recorded outtro we have seen, though. One odd thing about this device is that the projector unit and the remote seem to have been designed by two totally different people, down to the typography choices, curves, and color scheme. The remote wins in my opinion.

If anybody would have developed a cheap camera that run with blank cartridges like this one you would have had analogue tik tok in the 80s.

Beats the hell out of a Viewmaster!

Interesting. At secondary school in the mid 1970s we had the professional equivalent, a loop projector that projected 8mm film in Cartridges onto a much larger screen (maybe 20") It might have been Bell & Howell but I don't remember. It's purpose was to display animated films we would make using an 8mm Cine Camera in Maths club. When the film came back from developing we would load it into an empty cartridge case and splice it. Tessellating triangles was a film I made. The most impressive film anyone did was a Morph type plasticine man folding up the net of a cube only for a hand to smash it flat again. It all goes to show there was plenty of fun to be had before the days of computers in schools.

Here's a thought about the brightness problem: We saw that the mirrors were in quite a poor state, which is to be expected of plastic toy mirrors after ≈50 years. I wouldn't be surprised if the mirrors were 20% dimmer than when new. So the problem might not be the bulb at all, or at least only to a smaller extent. If one were to "resto-mod" this toy further, it would be interesting to see what an upgrade to proper glass mirrors could achieve.

When I first saw the Corgi name, I thought of the metal cars and trucks.

Once again, a pleasurable trip down the "alternate technical solution" path of kids toys. I see this as a visual compliment to "Hit Clips" and the one you reviewed that used tiny magnetic tapes.

So glad I sent you it now. Loved the video. I didn't expect you to give it a full on overhaul mind! I spoke to my parents about the machine tonight as my Mum seems to recall buying it from my Nana's catalogue around '81 which would have made me 3 years old. She said it came with a special offer that allowed you to pick some extra films. She then ordered a few more for my birthday. I'm not sure if the picture was actually any better than what you show in the video? It was never great thats for sure! Regardless of that though it provided me with many hours of entertainment so thanks for that nostalgic trip down memory lane!

Hey, I think I had one of those Mat!

E10 apparently describes the base. This one appears to have the lens you are looking for. I suspect there is no Bulbtown in the UK, but there is almost certainly an Imperial equivalent ... Great job as usual! https://www.bulbtown.com/K222_K222_2_KRYPTON_FLASHLIGHT_BULB_E10_BASE_p/k222.htm

Very enjoyable. I was just thinking of a similar (if not identical) thing from my childhood just a day or two ago. I think the film cartridges were lightly shorter and mostly opaque except for the light panel near one end. The basic unit was handheld/hand-cranked but I remember having the Snoopy Drive-in Theatre version that was basically like this but without the motor. (Probably the Fisher Price item mentioned above.) The problem was with getting a steady supply of movies; we never had more than 2-3 so it was easy to lose interest but yes, a major attraction for kids at the time. Thanks for that trip.

You were posh if you had one of these ! I had the hand-cranked viewer with a cartridge of Disney's "The Rescuers Abroad" To this day, I can remember each individual frame of that. At the age of 6 it was a real luxury to watch even a snippet of the same cartoon again and again whenever I wanted. Being aged 6 in the 1970's, I learnt about boredom....

Very cool old childhood tech. Kids now will never know the struggle we had lol

I played with a version of this system in a doctors waiting room in the 90s. However someone had obviously jury rigged it in to being plug in to the wall. So my dad wouldn't let me touch the case, just the cartridges.

Did you guys ever get the 2-XL 8tack robot quiz machine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-XL#/media/File:2-XL_Educational_Toy_Robot,_Mego_Corporation,_1978.jpg The buttons were so satisfying!

The charm of tactility cannot be undervalued, and it is precisely what is missing in the digital era. I liken it to the pound coin you lot use across the pond. It is a satisfying object to handle.

Fisher-Price manufactured the hand-held Movie Viewer in the US. No batteries or lights. Hand crank whilst looking towards the lamp. I adored the product and would have "matinees" with two "shorts" and a main feature (which was also short!). "From the Earth to the Moon" was a favorite.

Love seeing oddball formats like this that I never knew were a thing. I was born in the early 80s, so the idea of having a toy that you remember as being better is with me too. I had a tape player/recorder and a record player (both Fisher Price) that I'm sure I'd think sound horrible today.

Thanks for this very enjoyable video. As an 80s kid in the US, I had a hand-cranked version of this under the Fisher-Price brand, using the same cartridges: https://images.shopgoodwill.com/179/1-22-2020/4090081228268ddez.JPG I loved it, but I agree that it's difficult to explain the appeal to the current generation of whippersnappers.

I had the movie viewer with a single cartridge back when they were new. Mostly just to see how the animation was done one frame at a time. My wife remembers fondly having a Give A Show Projector by Kenner here in the US but it was just a slide projector for children.

Great video,as always. I'm surprised that most of things in this little machine are broken,but the belt still at least exists,unlike in old turntables you reviewed. Also maybe it's not my business and unfixable things but in the last part of the video there's strong electric-ish noise. Maybe it's the part of the microphone issues you mentioned,or maybe it's not. Anyhow,thank you very much,im very glad that I became a patron

You would have been the envy of school at the end of term bringing that in! I always wanted one of the hand-held ones but never got one.

You need a E10 Krypton torch bulb. I get mine from https://www.brewstersbatteries.co.uk I hope that helps.

Another obscure media format. 😃 A nice toy for sure. Wonder what today's kids growing up with their hands glued to a tablet computer will do to them in the long run... But the gifted kids probably watch Techmoan. 🤓 BTW, you mention that the bulb is "an E10 with a screw thread" which is a bit of a tautology. The "E" refers to the Edison Screw-system (and this is a 10mm diameter), so the screw thread is already implied. Not that it matters. Just trying to preempt the pedants by being one! 😁

The crossed over texts are in Finnish & Swedish

Yeah, I started out with a projector that I ordered from the ad in a comic book. It only played standard 8 movies and absolutely shredded and melted anything you put through it. I saved up my allowance money and got a GAF, which was an amazing upgrade at the time. It even self threaded the take up reel!

Loved this. I'm a bit older, so I caught the end of the home movie 8mm era in the mid 70s. You could buy 11 minute silent versions of Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure, Star Wars, etc. They also had sound versions, which I'm sure were pretty terrible, but getting a projector with sound was above my allowance pay grade. But the silent versions spawned my creativity and I recorded my own cassette soundtracks culled from movie soundtracks on records, which were a mish-mash mess that never really synced up, but I had fun non-the-less. I'd put up a sheet behind my bedroom curtains, turn on the projector, start the cassette, run over to dramatically pull open the curtains as the movie started. Such excitement!

Removed?

I had the smaller viewfinder one as a kid, and it was a neat, if boring novelty. Me being a tinkerer of course made it seem cooler to me than what it it really was. come to think of it, I'm 99% sure I came across a random reel of 8mm film 2 years back (stored in NZ), and IIRC I broke the cassettes apart when I was all of 8 or 9 and wound them on to this spool. The film advance, or more "escapement" was novel, the sproket drove the film in and out of the exposure window, and the pulling of the film, "peeled" it away from a small catch, where the next frame would then pop into place, and so on.

You can buy Hyper Bright clear LEDs and they come in sizes right up to 12 mm. I use them with a simple resistor dropper to run them off higher voltages. I believe Rapid and many other sellers have them. I was born to early for this one. My entertainment was a yoyo or a slide viewer with discs.

That was fun - my only real memories of 8mm film loops are watching cells divide, over and over again, on a different type of 8mm loop cart in first year biology class. Still can't remember the difference between meiosis and mitosis though; might as well been watching Donald Duck.

Other than the job of paper boy, my first real job was at a glass shop while I was in high school. My job was to fix windows, mirrors or screens folks brought in. The glass came in sheets of 4’ x 8’, and you’d have to carry them to a carpeted table and let the air cushion the big sheets as you’d lay them down to cut them. I doubt if I could do it today. But I’ve always had a fascination with glass, and I cringed when I saw those mirrors. Plastic mirrors don’t reflect as well as glass, and once they’re dulled like this they won’t do the job. It would be a task to replace all those mirrors, even if you could just stick new ones over the old ones. Would probably play hell with focus angles and what not. Still, it’s a pretty interesting toy. Thanks for the video.

LEDs are so variable, I suspect that bulb is intended to 'be seen' rather than 'to see', like a car indicator or brake light. I wonder if there is a colour LCD screen small enough to convert one of these cartridges to display anything you want. A totally pointless exercise but would have novelty value and would allow this to run constantly on display. Edit: Just looking that up reminded me of something - have you ever considered a video on a 35mm negative scanner? Amazon is trying to sell me Kodak's unit.

Maybe Corgi should've stuck to making die-cast toy cars?

When I was a child I had a Harbert Fonovideo, that uses a 45 rpm vinyl with slides synchronized with the audio. It is a completely mechanical toy, the audio works as in an old phonograph, the needle is attached to a diaphragm that vibrates and reproduces the audio. Very interesting!

I would have loved this as a kid! There was really something magical about mechanical moving pictures. For our battery-powered toys, my parents only let us use NiCd rechargeable batteries, and back then they were terrible - they made motors weak due to the lower voltage and they barely lasted for long at all! I wonder how much of the dimness is due to the LED not having a lens and how much is just due to the fogged-up mirrors. It looks like they're just cheap plastic mirrors and not "proper" glass ones?

I had forgotten just how analog toys were in the 1970s. Basic use of electricity even, such as Operation or Lite Brite, were such a thrill back then. Nowadays if my egg timer only has 2Gb of ram I'm disappointed.

It probably runs off 3 volts. 3 parallel set of 2 batteries in series. 1/3 the voltage for 3 times the runtime.

Looking forward to a good long ramble... Come on! Break the 2 hour time line :D

Those funny "mini-versions" of grown-up's toys ;-). When I was a kid: no batteries! The first thing my father would do is solder wires on it, then the Fleischmann MSF trafo for the model railway could power anything :-P

I Had the handheld version with Mickey's trailer totally forgot about it :)

That's another thing I've never seen! Thanks. Btw, the overwritten languages on the HULK one - is Finnish and Swedish.

I had one of these with the love bug. I forgot all about it until your video. Thanks for the memories