Patterson Blick Look 3D Peep Shows

You can find each of the first four Peep Shows on the following linked pages:

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However, after these came three more, which unfortunately were so rare that we haven't been able to scan them for you — although here's the front & back of one of them (courtesy of Jon Levine):

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The new titles were "Animals of British Woodland", "Animals of British Seashore" & "Animals of British Moorland". It seems that, like several other Letraset products at the time, these later titles were produced in conjunction with the RSPCA.

Not your standard "panorama" format, the Peep Shows came with instructions which will give you some idea of what to expect.

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They even attracted enough interest to merit a Sunday Times Magazine colour supplement article, written by the notorious Lionel Birch.

Apparently, these Peep Shows (based on a traditional format) were invented by Tom Hawkyard, Picture Editor of the Times. They were designed & compiled by Dennis Knight (of the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Books) & a couple of others.

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Now… did you notice the 'odd one out', above? That's right: the Trojan Horse set was titled not "Look→", but "Look→In". In fact, we have another version of this set with the more common wording, but it's interesting that there is this evidence of a change of title. It's not hard to guess why the title had to be changed, since "Look-In Magazine" was a comic which had a target market of children the same age as would be buying these Peep Shows — & associations with Letraset transfer promotions to boot!

The fiddling around with the name is particularly odd since if you check out the small print you'll see that Patterson Blick went to great lengths to patent the term "OPTIVISTA" — which they don't then give any prominence elsewhere. So they had a perfectly good name for it, but went for the more impactful "Look→In" instead… which they then had to change.

A bit of a cock-up on the marketing front, in fact.


Get started here:

• Patterson Blick Look 3D — The Ballet: Swan Lake →

Picture Credit: The SPLAT Scan Archives — Jon Levine