This was my first camera, part of Kodak’s ill-fated attempt to clone Polaroid’s self-developing film. They were sued for a fortune and lost… ended up having to send everyone rebates when they took the cameras off the market.

The funny thing was how lame the competition really was. Polaroid’s One-Step camera had a built-in flash and a fun little buzzy motor that ejected your photo… Kodak, meanwhile, decided to replace the motor with an old-timey handle. (Thus the plastic-retro look of the thing.) You literally cranked the handle until the photo emerged, and in place of a built-in flash, I was still stuck using flash-cubes.

It’s hard to imagine a time when the photos you took weren’t limited by opportunity, or even the amount of film on hand, but by how many single-use flashbulbs you could carry.