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Give-A-Show "Kenner's Home Theatre for Kids" By Euphrates
This was one of those toys that look like hours of fun on TV but when you had
one, it never really felt right. Actually, most toys were probably this way,
but I clearly remember spending about 20 minutes of my childhood messing with this
thing. I don't recall any of my friends laughing at the cartoons or
insisting that I dig it out while they were visiting, and I have no memory of my
mother patting me lovingly on the head while I watched the Flintstones in my
darkened room.
The premise of the Kenner toy was fun enough. You bought the basic set which was a projector (glorified flashlight is more like it!) and 112 35mm slides. Well, that's actually 16 cartoon strips with 7 pictures on each. Boy, that got me every time. You would think, "Wow, 112 slides!" and come home to just over a dozen. You would run the slides through the projector onto your bedroom wall and enjoy the equivalent of a 4 square foot illuminated comic strip. Like a lot of boomer toys, these projectors are fairly easy to find today and they are generally in working condition. Occasionally, the pin will be missing in the hinge of the handle but other than that, they made it through time in great shape. There is always a catch, though, and in this case, it's the color slides. The slides are frequently scratched and warped. You can still bully them through the projector if they aren't too distorted. Here is a partial list of the projectors and the different slides. Projectors 1960-1976
Easy-Show - hand-crank movie projector with 4 movies Slides
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