Mattel's Google View-Master Project Set For ToyFair 2015
Invites have just been sent out to the press inviting them to a showing of Google's first team-up project with the toymakers at Mattel. This event will take place on the 14th of February, the first official day of NYC Toy Fair. While Toy Fair will be held by the Toy Industry Association, Inc at the Jacob K Javits Convention Center, this Google / Mattel event will be held off-site – just about 2 miles away, as it were, but still off-site and not officially associated.
The invitation makes use of a very obvious View-Master Reel graphic and View-Master font text. This implies that we're looking at some sort of "viewer" kind of device for the masses – perhaps even something as obvious as a production-level Google Cardboard device.
Above: a View-Master reel. Below: Google Cardboard for Virtual Reality with your smartphone device.
But Toy Fair is about the kids, right?
Not always!
Back in 2012, The View-Master digital archive was mined for an app made for the Spatial View accessory for iPhone. This device allowed you to see 3D images with your iPhone much in the same way a View-Master allowed you to with its plastic toy.
That app is no longer on any app store, and (nearly) all traces of the team-up between Spatial View and View-Master have been wiped from the face of the earth.
Now you can buy a Google Cardboard viewer in several different ways, but always from a 3rd-party source and always with the thought that "this is just an experimental sort of thing" in the back of your mind.
Even though it's serious business, it's still made of cardboard.
So what will Google do? They'll team up with a massive toy-maker like Mattel to bring this device/accessory to the mainstream, that's what they'll do.
Just jam your phone in this plastic toy and you'll be ready to roll.
This is called co-branding, and it's going to work. It worked for the https://www.slashgear.com/lego-simpsons-to-return-for-2015-30361168/, after all.
If Mattel doesn't get there first, LEGO will!
Stay tuned as we await the next step in Cardboard. Or some completely unexpected device we haven't foreseen at all.