Flickering Spacetime

A common sight in the sixties were the false 3d effect pictures which were used on greetings cards, novelties and keyrings. Made of a plastic laminate, I was always fascinated by the corrugated surface and never really understood how the process worked. Years later, i discovered that they were called 'lenticular' images and were covered by a special prismatic coating, which used tiny lenses to deceive the eye into viewing separate images as a whole, giving the flickering, three dimensional effect.

As most of the examples I had seen previously were always small - such as novelty items from lucky bags of part f a toy, I never really gave them much attention as an image format, assuming the quality of the image would be poor, given the strange nature of the format.  Recently, I bought a couple of lenticular postcards, again from the sixties, depicting space scenes and was very surprised as how crisp and sharp the images were, despite being sheathed in thick laminate.

The first one I bought was a scene with a moon landing with a large rocket and two astronauts waving to their colleagues on the plan below. This was a standard postcard and was mounted in a double frame, with a small plain wooden frame, recessed into a larger gilt frame with a glass front. The whole assembly being supported by a wire hanger. The increased depth of the frames made the 3d effect even more immersive, almost like looking though a small window. Unmounting the frame and cleaning the glass and the surface of the card revealed a profound difference in clarity too, as dust had accumulated on the card and on the glass.

The card is assumed to have been produced by the japanese Asahi trading company and is clearly from the early sixties. The scene shows a large 'Atlas' style rocket fitted with landing gear in a 'SSTO' (Single Stage To Orbit) deployment. next to it are two astronaut figures waving to two capsules in the distance, on the lunar surface. Rather than being an illustration, the image seems to be a photographed model, with a diorama supporting the models. The rocket is not a familiar design, but seems to be similar to early Atlas ICBM vehicles, with telescopic legs fitted. In the middle distance are two very simplistic landers, which seem to be redundant as the rocket itself has clearly already made a successful landing and would not need a dedicated landing capsule.

The two landers are very rudimentary and obviously predate the Apollo programme by around five years. They are cosmetically similar to some of the early space toys I have from the same era and very closely resemble modern a 'LEM-type' capsule that I have found recently.

The second and later card is from Gibraltar and made by a local company. This shows a very recognisable Lunar Module, presumably one of the early Revell releases as it is too finely cast to be the more rudimentary Airfix kit, which appeared in the latter half of the sixties. Several other lenticular cards have used the Revell Astronaut kit to great effect, too. It is very similar to a Clifford toy LEM that I have, but does resemble a kit rather than a toy, much more closely. The docking collar is missing and a simple light ha been installed inside for effect. The Apollo Service module behind it, is another small model, with the image of the Earth probably a photograph and the luxuriantly green moon surface being made from plaster or resin.

 

Some LEM variants are shown below, illustrating the variance in toy and novelty makers approach to making a moon lander, in the rush to produce product for the Moon Landing in 1969.