{"id":27134,"date":"2023-10-24T01:03:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T05:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=27134"},"modified":"2023-10-23T02:27:02","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T06:27:02","slug":"brother-can-you-spare-2-98-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/brother-can-you-spare-2-98-us\/","title":{"rendered":"brother, can you spare $2.98 US?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Oct, 1955 ad for a HIT-like camera marketed by a Chicago firm<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. Post WW2, any miniature camera was usually called a ‘spy’ camera. Many American marketing companies brought in finished cameras from Occupied Japan<\/em> and flogged them State-side. Usually the cameras were claimed to be ‘precision’ or ‘precision-made’ although most were just gussied up miniature box cameras.<\/p>\n

The cheap price often included rolls of ‘miniature film’, a camera case, and a developing service – or a list of where to take the tiny exposed rolls of film.<\/p>\n

For the camera collectors, many of the unnamed cameras are simply grouped as ‘HIT-like’ referencing a tiny Japanese import from the likely maker.<\/p>\n

This October, 1955 ad in Popular Mechanics is for one such ‘gold-plated’ model sold directly by the importer, Modern Merchandise Co., in Chicago (you could buy three and pay even slightly less per camera)!<\/p>\n

Thanks once again to George Dunbar for spotting this advertisement and sharing it with us.<\/p>\n

NB. The post title is a riff on a “dirty ’30s” song from 1932, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime<\/a>” sung here by der Bingle (Bing Crosby). My own copy is by Joan Collins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. Post WW2, any miniature camera was usually called a ‘spy’ camera. Many American marketing companies brought in finished cameras from Occupied Japan and flogged them State-side. Usually the cameras were claimed to be ‘precision’ or ‘precision-made’ although most were … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[972,398,1971,4460],"class_list":["post-27134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-ad","tag-camera","tag-chicago","tag-occupied-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27134"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27139,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27134\/revisions\/27139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}