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Kenner Hand-cranked viewer and cartridges (Released) — Page 2

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Well, so five years later I’m done! The missing piece was an incredible iOS app called “GyroFilm” that emulates, of all things, a vintage toy projector… not unlike the Kenner Movie Viewer! I just discovered it 3 days ago, and it inspired me to revisit and finish the 5 clips. They are now done. And I can’t help thinking no one will ever see this. I don’t know if anyone is interested in this thread, but if they are, and if they are one of the handful of people who cares about or better, remembers these unique sequences, please reach out to me. The restorations - or more properly - the digital recreations - are done.

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me too!!!

“You can’t polish a turd. But you can shape it to look like candy.”

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Uploaded to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/joetunon

Please note: the resolution on YouTube is not meant for these clips. They are loaded just to show the awesome sequences that were assembled for the toy film cartridges. Note that 3 of the 5 clips are mirrored horizontally! This is not an accident on my part. I kept the orientation true to the original toy films. This might be the “alternate footage” that some remember! Every frame in every clip is accurate down to the last bit! This took me 2 years to put together, and about 20 years to finally find the right software to play them back: it’s an iOS app called GyroFilm. Download these MP4’s to your iPhone photo album to be able to open them in the app. If you care to go through the trouble, I promise you you will be absolutely floored at how incredibly accurate the emulation of a toy vintage projector is, with the circular wheel and its 8mm click sound and vintage filter. I don’t know if anyone else on the planet can appreciate this digital recreation as much as me, but they are there in case anyone does remember and wishes to re-experience this magnificent toy and original Star Wars clips (before there were VCRs!) in all of their glory!

MTFBWY!

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A nice blast from the past! You might want to think about putting a little gate weave into the title cards for extra authenticity. 😃

I’d love to see the one’s Kenner did for Alien just to see how they dealt with an R rated film.

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Where were you in '77?

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Yes! A gate weave on the title cards would be perfect! Will do! (I’m out of town for a couple of weeks but now I have something to do when I get back!) The vintage filter in the app takes care of the film noise but is missing the gate weave. Thanks for the tip!

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I was born in 76, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen these Star Wars “cartridges”. I had yellow ones, like this one, are they of the same product?

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Similar idea, but incompatible. Those yellow carts were for Fisher Price hand cranked viewers and even a small projector with a built in screen. FP had more titles made for it. They actually brought it back recently, but without any of the licensed titles.
http://www.retroland.com/fisher-price-movie-viewer/

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Where were you in '77?

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It is still my plan to digitize all of the other Kenner cartridges. I believe that I have all of the SW ones.

BTW, is it really true that I flipped parts horizontally? I don’t remember doing any scene by scene changes. I do remember it being rather hard to feed because it was wound backwards from normal on the spool and thus curled the wrong way.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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“May the Force Be With You”, “Battle in Hyperspace”, and “Destroy Death Star” were all horizontally flipped in the toy cartridges compared to the theatrical versions. “Assault on Death Star” and “Danger at the Cantina” had the proper orientation. Preserving the horizontal flip in the first three is critical if the desire is to preserve the sequences as they were in the toy.

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joe12stories said:

“May the Force Be With You”, “Battle in Hyperspace”, and “Destroy Death Star” were all horizontally flipped in the toy cartridges compared to the theatrical versions. “Assault on Death Star” and “Danger at the Cantina” had the proper orientation. Preserving the horizontal flip in the first three is critical if the desire is to preserve the sequences as they were in the toy.

Ok, that’s great information. I’ll probably re-capture the first one anyways, since I have hi-def now.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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Really enjoyed watching them, joe12stories - and your cover of Space Oddity too!

Thanks 😃

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

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How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

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