Jul 23, 2012

Mail Order Monday - Rocketman Televiewer (1952)

Rocketman televiewer ad from 1952 comic

I always try to do a little bit of research on these ads and sometimes it actually pays off with something interesting.

Fury Comics has a little info on the comic hero this ad is based on called...wait for it...Rocketman! Although he's called Rocketman in the comic and sports the same rocket suit on the comic's cover that you see here, he travels by spaceship. While lame, I guess technically travelling in a rocket ship, you can still get away with calling yourself Rocketman. Fury Comics looks like they have quite a few comic scans posted on their site, I'll have to waste some time there later.
Rocketman Televiewer ad from comic book
Color version of ad on Ebay
I wasn't able to find any info about the Televiewer itself. The ad makes it sound like it's a projector, especially where it mentions the images being on 16mm film. But based on the cost and the "beautiful colored plastic" and "compact" description I'm guessing it's similar to those photo keychains that you had to hold up to the light while looking into it with one eye to see the photo inside it. There's probably a slot to manually feed the filmstrip through frame by frame.

2 comments:

  1. This is really neat! When I first read the title I thought for sure it was going to be one of those transparent plastic sheets that are green on the bottom peach in the center and blue at the top that hangs in front of a black and white tv screen but this is way more mysterious.And I love that RocketMan character.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sure would be cool to find one of these i think. : )

    ReplyDelete