In 1959, the Kenner Toy Company of Cincinnati, Ohio introduced its Give-A-Show Projector. What this basically was was a flashlight that looked a little like a projector and which came with little six-frame filmstrips that told stories, mainly featuring licensed cartoon characters. More primitive, it couldn't have been…but in the pre-VCR days, it was kind of impressive. That is, if you were young enough. I probably got mine around '60 or '61. I would have wanted one anyway but the fact that some sets featured Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear was an added incentive.
Unfortunately, like a lot of toys with a great premise, the Give-A-Show Projector had limited fun. Each one came with around 32 of the flimsy little filmstrips and once you'd shown them all to your friends, that was it. They gave you some blank strips on which you could draw your own but that didn't work so well. Still, it was fun for a couple of days.
Looking back now, it looks so primitive…and actually it did, not long after I gave up on mine. I began collecting and running 8mm silent movies of Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, etc. Once I was into that, the Kenner Give-A-Show didn't seem so impressive. Now, it all seems positively prehistoric…and it makes you wonder what, a decade or two from now, will make our TiVos and LCD screens and Blu-ray players seem like one step above making hand shadows.
For more into on the Kenner Give-A-Show Projector, take a look at Jon's Random Acts of Geekery. I especially like the fact that over the years, the Kenner folks made the box look more modern and made the projector look a little more space-age…but the toy itself remained a technological no-brainer — a flashlight and some flimsy filmstrips.