| Yes, THE RUMORS that you may have read
or heard about ARE TRUE! Fortunately, there is good news and there is bad
news.
The good news is that Reel 3-D currently
has a LARGE number of View-Master Personal Reel Mounts in stock. In addition
to those, we have ordered a very large quantity of the final reel production,
whatever the quality turns out to be.
The bad news is regarding the current poor
quality of the reels. The really bad news is that the PRODUCTION OF THE
PERSONAL REEL MOUNTS IS FINALLY COMING TO AN END.
The current production of View-Master Personal
Reel Mounts have MANY pockets that are glued COMPLETELY shut. Several repairs
have been attempted by the factory, but the problem seems to persist. In
addition to the problem, View-Master (Fisher-Price) has decided that the
cost of repairing all of the problems with the Personal Reel Making Machine
have finally become too great to be justified. They have been in continuous
production since 1954, and the dies have finally worn out. They are
trying to get the machine working as well as possible for one last large
production run, and that will be the end of the Personal Reel Mounts, as
we have known them.
The positive side of this sad situation
is that the pockets of the glued-shut reels CAN be opened with the careful
insertion of an Xacto-type knife blade in the insertion slot. Virtually
everyone we have discussed the situation with feels that it is better to
get glued shut reels that can be fixed, THAN TO HAVE NO REELS AT
ALL.
Therefore we want all of our View-Master
customers to be aware that effective immediately, ALL PERSONAL REEL MOUNTS
ARE SOLD ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. Tight pockets and glued shut film
pockets are to be considered normal, and we cannot replace them with anything
better. We do believe that our older inventory was received BEFORE most
of the current glued-shut problems, and we will ship our oldest inventory
first when filling orders.
However, there is no way to know exactly
when the problem started, and we can make no guarantee as to the quality
of the reels that you will receive. As View-Master has not changed the
cost of the reels, we are keeping our prices exactly the same as they have
been. We are very sorry to have to make this announcement regarding the
end of this product.
We thank you for your understanding, and
personally suggest you stock up on reel mounts while they are still available.
We are doing that for our own use, as we continue to use the View-Master
Personal Stereo Camera ourselves, and plan on doing so for a long time.
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