Collecting Give a Show Projectors

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Whether the young people of today would find these as much as fun as I did when I was given a Give a Show Projector as a present in late 1970s is open to question. My guess is probably YES but there a lot of middle aged children who are collecting these great toys.

The Give a Show Projectors was a toy slide projector introduced by US toy company Kenner Products in 1959. In the UK and Australia it was sold under the Chad Valley brand.

The set I had was a general one with multiple single slides similar to the one pictured below. There were 16 strips featuring 7 slides so a total of 112 colour slides picturing stories from cartoon characters, TV shows and stories. The set below includes Popeye, Cinderella, Noddy, Woody Woodpecker, Goldilocks, Robinson Crusoe, Oswald Rabbit, Buffalo Bill, Maverick and more.

The projector was a large torch with a slot that allowed the user to feed a strip of film through the light it emitted to create projected images. The torch and images were projected on to a blank wall in a dimmed room and the show could then proceed. Most slides had word and pictures, so was a great educational toy as well. The standard projector could project well up to 5 feet.

the projector from the give a show projector — Project and Slides

What makes them even more interesting and collectable is that there were many sets were licensed for the system including popular TV series, movies and cartoons such as: Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Daktari, Thunderbirds, Stingray and more. Some later sets included sounds in the form of accompanying records which would be manually advanced when a tone sounded.

A Chad Valley Daktari ‘As Seen on BBC TV’ Give a Show Projector set

chad valley daktari give a show projector — Chad Valley Daktari Give A Show Projector

A Chad Valley Stingray ‘Gerry Anderson’s Exciting TV Series’ Give a Show Projector set

Chad Valley Stingray Give A Show Projector

A Disney Jungle Book set

disney jungle book give a show projector — Disney Jungle Book Give A Show Projector

A Kenner Star Wars Give A Show Projector

As well as sets with projectors individual slide sets were also available.

We will be adding a price guide and value guide for individual sets but movie related sets in complete and good condition can sell for up to £80/$120.

Related
Chad Valley information at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Valley_(toy_brand)
Kenne Products information at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenner_Products