Tuesday 21 September 2010

Chad Valley 'Give A Show' Projector (1965)

Here's a post I've been meaning to do for ages. The Chad Valley 'Give A Show' projector. Now to kids of the 60's Chad Valley projectors need no introduction. However, to kids of the 90's they probably need to be explained...


Chad Valley were the company who produced little plastic viewing 'projectors' - basically a torch, in front of which you held a slide! The accompanying slide-type stills, which you selected image by image, ran on to create a short story. Ah, life was simple in those days.


Chad Valley was, effectively, the PSP of its day, and covered many different kids shows, including Doctor Who. Have a look here for an extensive look at the Chad Valley history.

The set we're interested in, the Chad Valley Doctor Who set, was produced in 1965. Click through to the 'Give A Show' section on the link above, scroll down until you see the Who set, and click... and you'll see a nice library of ALL the images used in the stories.

137 - DOCTOR WHO IN LILLIPUT
138 - THE DALEKS DESTROY THE ZOMITES
139 - DOCTOR WHO ON THE AQUA PLANET
140 - DOCTOR WHO IN THE SPIDER’S WEB
141 - DOCTOR WHO MEETS THE WATERMEN
142 - THE DEFEAT OF THE DALEKS
143 - THE SECRETS OF TARDIS
144 - THE DALEKS ARE FOILED
145 - DOCTOR WHO AND THE NERVE MACHINE
146 - THE ICE-AGE MONSTER
147 - RESCUED FROM THE DALEKS
148 - ESCAPE FROM THE AQUAFIEN
149 - WHERE DIAMONDS ARE WORTHLESS
150 - THE PREHISTORIC MONSTER
151 - ON THE PLANET VORTIS
152 - THE ZARBI ARE DESTROYED


Now there's lots of these Chad Valley sets available, but the one us Who fans want is obviously, the Who one, illustrated above, which came with a special Who branded box. There's one on ebay at the moment with a 'buy-it-now' price of 199 UK Pounds. Other versions have the odd Dalek amongst non-Who images on the cover, so I suppose they are collectable as well, but sell for much lower amounts.

You could also buy the slide strips seperately from the projector, so I guess there are Who sets out there, perhaps even unopened in their original sales packaging... maybe. Who knows.


I can't remember where the images I've used for this post came from, so apologies (and thanks) if they're yours.

Some bright spark has put the slides into little film edits and posted them on YouTube:

PART 1



PART 2



PART 3



PART 4



Well worth a watch if you have the time to spare...

Now the only thing I want to know is how I rip these vids from YouTube so I can save them for my own personal pleasure... just in case they dissapear from YouTube when the solar flares hit.

2 comments:

  1. for sale-chad valley projector/slides in 1965 original Dr Who box in full working condition

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fortunately, I have kept mine.

    ReplyDelete