Testimonials | Optical Toys

Arianna

Thank you so much for your wonderful toys! Everyone loves them and they help so much in teaching animation. The children love your toys. I love your toys!

Terry J

I am so grateful! I had played with this toy (Ole Million Face) @ my great-grandmother's home many times & enjoy the many happy memories.

Terrie R

I love your paper toys!

Suzanne A.

I just finished putting together your Mechanical Birdwatching Cat kit and enjoyed it so much. This is just the kind of thing I love doing in my spare time, which I don't have much of.

Devon K.

Everything you sent is fantastic! I especially liked the shadow play.

Jim L.

One of your optical toys (Daisy galloping by Muybridge) came into my possession. I like.

Anne, Houghton Library, Harvard University

I had trouble holding on to copies of the "Old Woman" (Who Was Tossed Up in a Blanket) so that they reach the hands of those they were intended to! You did a great job. I bet it was difficult. It is great.

Sinon N.

I bought a nice paper movie at Tate Modern called "Cat galloping" and I like it very much.

(Unintelligible signature)

Hi! I really 'flipped' when I came across your catalog on the web. Up until September I used to work in the Empire State Bldg. My wife is 'gestating' a daughter who will be named 'Zoetrope' - or at least Zoe. I wanted to do a stop-motion of her belly but you've got one already! So I look forward to this first batch of optical toys. Thanks!

Richard T.

I have purchased your Novelty Metamorphosis Picture Book, and love it.

Nancy S.

How wonderful to visit your website and discover the person behind the flip books and toys I've been enjoying all these years....I recently visited the International Antiquarian Book Fair in Boston where, as in other years, I came across a beautiful set of phenakistascope disks - for nearly $3000! It's so pleasing to be able to place an order for a reproduction at a fraction of the expense and no loss in delight.

Valerie C.

I was so excited to find "Ole Million Face"... I remember the original "Changeable Charlie" when I was a child and always wanted to have another one at my home for our grandchildren. I've been looking for years for another one.

Joan I., Montessori School Director

I recently purchased some of your fabulous cards in New York City. It was so wonderful to discover items that are usually teacher made. There are many items we would incorporate in our learning segments.

Carol B.

I purchased several of your Optical Toy (automaton) kits while visiting friends in Boston, and have recently constructed them. They're terrific!!

Christopher D.

I have had the pleasure of finding one or two of your flipbooks in various souvenir shops during my travels. They're great! How can I get more? I'm a cameraman - great gifts for assistants and such.

Roger S.

We recently discovered your "Metamorphosis Picture Book" and were pleasantly surprised to see a revival of this type of historical card.

Mandy R.

I bought a copy of your "Gestation Animation" by Karl Baden from the New Museum in New York and would like another two copies for my midwife, who was very taken with it!

Judy P.

While in Paris, France two years ago, I purchased four photo lapse Muybridge booklets at one of the city museums. I have enjoyed these items tremendously and would like to purchase more for the clever gifts they are.

Maggie B.

In recent memory I have not had a more enjoyable, engaged and oblivious hour than the one I recently spent compulsively completing Peter Markey's "Mechanical Cat." The friend who gave it to me for the holidays knows me well. I am now an addict in need of a fix. Do you publish other such wonders?

Barbara W.

Ten or more years ago I began a tradition of including a flipbook in my nieces' Christmas stockings. I figured it was a great "collection" idea - and it was. They love 'em and look forward to them every year. In addition, my sister, my mom, my nieces' cousins also get them and look forward to them. Of course, as they've grown up, there are now the boyfriends, husbands, & partners who also get flip books. I think you can begin to see my dilemma. I try to get each person a flip book specifically for them and sometimes this works out very well (your "Gestation Animation", which I just found this year, is going to my niece with the 1 year old.) I've really appreciated your Eadweard Muybridge collection and I probably have bought all of them. Many I know I have bought several copies of because, though I try to give everyone something different, it's hard.

Arianna

Bonnie W.

It's wonderful to have new materials to share with my students. They love the variety of items I show to help them understand animation basics.

Alan L., National Archives

Last weekend I purchased two Eadweard Muybridge Flipbooks from the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American Art. Three or four times each year I do motion picture and videotape preservation training workshops and will find these items ideal to teach persistence of vision, and the fact that these (flipbooks) really capture sequences of related still images that are frozen in time but can be viewed in ways to create the illusion of continuous motion.

Gisela V.

Your Gestation flip book is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Alison F.

I purchased "Jumping over Boy's Back (Leap Frog)" with the intention of using it in my classroom as a way to help illustrate (to a four year old) the process of animation, and hopefully to lead into the students making less sophisticated "flip books" of their own. (The student had asked about how Peter Pan moved. She knew that he was drawn, but did not understand how these pictures were given movement.)

(The) Sandy G.

Thank goodness you exist.

Richard R.

Optical Toys are cool and a great learning tool as well. So how has your summer been? It's been hot here for a change, but several thunderstorms have breezed through recently to cool it down a little. Lots of lightning. Lightning is nature's "optical toy" perhaps...there's a flash, and "persistence of vision" is in effect. <a href="http://mobile.opticaltoys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/sun001.jpg"><img src="http://mobile.opticaltoys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/sun001-300x245.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="245" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-896" /></a>

Andy F.

Wow! What great toys!!