Kodak Brownie Movie Camera ad c1960
Toronto. 8mm home movies were all the rage over a half century ago. Fuelled by cheap equipment, fast lenses, and colour film, movie gear was one dimension of a push for a share of the blossoming post war amateur market.
Not only content to earn sales income from colour film, Kodak entered the 8mm market offering low cost cameras and gear. With well known brands in Kodak and Brownie, the mighty company embraced a future where every camera sold was another market for Kodak’s money-maker: film.
This 1960 ad from Life magazine (April 11, 1960, p 67) is typical of the ads bought by marketeers in their push for a segment of the burgeoning home movie market.
My father-in-law was using a Brownie like this one to record his vacation trips. But by the time I married, the movie fad had faded for him and I only remember the one movie of his trip out west. My thanks to George Dunbar for this piece of history.
