6/11/11

xray specs- famous yet disapointing comic book ad ever!


I had them and I'm sure some of you had them. Reading those old comics of course we all wanted those magic glasses.  imagine a chance to have one of supermans abilities! To see through cute girls clothes, through walls, and much much more...sadly they are as in the blurry small print *Novelty use only*.
Regardless of how ineffective they really are they were still very memorable and a great gag to just wear around. I remember  they didnt work, though the second you put them on in school all the girls started to hide..muwahahahaha...and so on.


the trick was it gave the illusion of bones in your hand when you look at your hand in the light.they had many diferent names but all did the same thing x-ray gogs,specs,glasses, spexs so long as they had x-ray, you were good to go. I often wonder why you dont see these in suprise bags or supercheap novelty stores. I think one of the most rememerable x-ray specs in popculture during my child hood would have been the game Bart vs the space mutants. The famous game (yet was very crappy looking back on it now) was a parody on the movie They live and like the movie Bart used X-ray specs/Glasses that allowed him to see the aliens true faces.

Well I've decided to explain how they work adn also how to make your own, seeing that its almost impossible to find unless you purchase them online. so lets get to the basics of what they are first.
Plastic glasses frame, cardboard, red feathers....thats it!  the easiest what to make a pair is to simpley just purchase any cheap dollarstor play glasses and measure out the size of the card board with the size of the  frames you can use a template online or just draw your own x-ray goggles with markers on the card board.  now the easiest way to make the effect is just use a hole punch and punch out a hole on each cardboard lens ...actually wikipedia article explains it best:
The lenses consist of two layers of cardboard with a small hole about 6 mm (.25 inch) in diameter punched through both layers. The user views objects through the holes. A feather is embedded between the layers of each lens. The vanes of the feathers are so close together that light is diffracted, causing the user to receive two slightly offset images. For instance, one would see two offset images of the pencil. Where the images overlap, a darker image is obtained, supposedly giving the illusion that one is seeing the graphite embedded within the body of the pencil. As may be imagined, the illusion is not particularly sustainable.

so there you have it  you most likely thought that dollar was well spent huh? I know even though it was a complete croc, I still enjoyed the novelty use of them just the same.

here is a little famous Canadian Ghost show for kids about what can happen if you get the wrong x-ray specs lol :
enjoy this  tale from the midnight society