Honestly I hadn’t given film cameras a thought in years. Between smartphone cameras and standard digital cameras I thought they had just kind of vanished as a mass market consumer item with maybe a few scientific and hobby users remaining.
Well…I was wrong. They are being sold across the counter at Walmart! Little instant film cameras with instant credit card sized pics.
Well every time I’m at the mall I see people paying $7 to get four pictures of themselves taken in a booth. Some people like to have a picture to hold in their hand I guess.
Instant film cameras are good for privacy, because they only create one copy of the image. Someone would have to get their hands on that physical copy in order to create another. I can imagine a lot of people would be using these to take sex pictures.
‘Polaroid’ is NOT Polaroid - in the Bankruptcy, every last asset of Polaroid was sold - including the use of the name ‘Polaroid’.
I don’t know if the TV’s are made by the same people who make the cameras who make the film, etc.
But it ain’t the Polaroid of your youth.
And the store that goes/went by the name ‘Wards’ was NOT the old Montgomery-Wards (which, toward the end, also went by ‘Wards’) - they will not honor you M-W gift certificate, nor are they interested in fixing your Admiral* product.
how many knew the Admiral name was ‘Monkey Wards’? How many ever heard of ‘Admiral’ brand products? (that is probably why M-W failed)
It’s not “Polaroid” for legal reasons – they don’t want to be saddled with paying all those retirees, for instance. So the company was killed and resuscitated. But it still uses the same sort of color stripe branding. Until they finally moved a couple of years ago, they occupied the same buildings as “Old Polaroid”. I’m certain there are some people from original Polaroid still working there (in buildings only a few miles from their old digs).
It’s not quite the same as those movie studios that buy the “National Lampoon” name so they can slap it on their direct-to-DVD movies. Polaroid wants the advantage of some continuity without the financial responsibility the name implies.
And for some reason, it’s terrific fun at parties with adults, all of who have 8-10 megapixel cameras on their phones in their pockets.
I have to figure it’s a nostalgic things- they’re excited to see the pictures actually develop like they did as children (and for children, it’s a new thing anyway).