Golden Viewmaster

We've been home almost a week now, but I'm still relishing our celebrations for my parents' 50th anniversary. So I have to share a funny little story...

I've been collecting the family photos for awhile from all over (and then divvying out the originals at parties after we have them safely scanned, stored and shared). One of my brothers sent a small box of odds and end photos just a few months ago that he found as he was shipping my parents' their last boxes after their more recent move. This box had a single custom-made Viewmaster reel with four or five photos from my parents' wedding (in 3D of course). I thought it would be fun to have that out at the party and so I went in search of a viewer at the store. First stop Target.

Personally, I'm a viewmaster fan, but I enjoy them especially for photos of real things. The Map Guy got an outer space set for a birthday one year; we have dinosaurs, insects and gorillas too. Every time I look for more of these reels, I'm disappointed to only find cartoon character ones. But this time I couldn't even find a standard viewer. They have some sort of flat ones now that I couldn't make heads or tails of; the only other choice was a viewmaster projector which wouldn't have quite the right effect.

A few days later I ran into Walmart to check out their selection. A lot of the same stuff as Target, but then it jumped out at me - the Incredibles Viewmaster gift set. Hmmm. This could be a lot of fun (and right up my family's alley).

We managed to carefully slice open the packaging and insert the wedding viewmaster reel. This way when you picked up the box and peeked into the viewer (without opening the package) you would be in for a surprise.

Well, there are a few others things I should have done, but it was a fun surprise anyway. I was going to wrap it up in elegant wedding paper, but things got a little busy (for example 13 people in a 15 passenger van for a 10 hour drive!). I presented them with the "Incredibles Viewmaster Gift Set" and invited them to take a look. Laughter and surprise ensued as the box went from person to person and they finally opened it up to switch from picture to picture (that was the first time I saw them in 3D too, since we didn't open the box). It turns out that my parents didn't even remember owning this viewmaster reel, so it was a fun surprise.

A few of my brothers had started joking about false advertising on the box when I responded that I didn't know what they were talking about and read this from the box: "It's an incredible story about an incredible family of undercover superheroes."

I think that's just about right. :)