Oh, what could have been! This Snoopy Cassette Projector Artwork shows us some artist concepts for a device to project cassette films. Before video tapes and DVDs, these hand-cranked little film strips was all kids had to relive their favorite cartoon moments again and again. You can find out where I found this wonderful piece of missing history on Patreon.
What I Love – The imagination! The clarity! Here’s some fully thought out designs that look like they could just pop right out of the paper and be used. It’s not a frivolous sketch, but a final rendering before someone pulls the trigger and says “Let’s make it!” However, this Snoopy Cassette Projector Artwork never made it to final production. Instead, Kenner seems to have stuck with putting Snoopy on their existing products from the mid 1970’s.
The other interesting aspect is how much it looks like Kenner’s Snoopy Electric Pencil Sharpener. There’s surely a story to be told about why these didn’t get produced and what the market was like. It may be lost to time, unfortunately. If you have insight, send it along.
One lasting piece of history is on the back. Apparently this was made for the girl’s division of toys. From my Google search, it seems like a lot of boy version of movie viewers were made, like Six Million Dollar Man, Star Wars, Alien, etc, but for girls it was mostly generic types and the Bionic Woman. The packaging for the Snoopy products always had boys on them, yet may have been for the girls’ market. Go figure!
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