Bad Monkey is a really entertaining TV series from 2024 that I've recently been watching.
It's based on a book by Carl Hiaasen, also called Bad Monkey, and it's unusually well done.
That is not something I often say about TV programs, in fact I usually say they are utter crap. But I like Bad Monkey, both the book and the TV series.
In episode 7 there is an Instamatic camera. Although I've seen those before I don't know much about them and have never used one, or even seen one in the flesh. Maybe they were popular in America but not so much in New Zealand?
So I had questions! - When were they popular?, how much did they cost?, and are they now cool again and having a revival in the digital era?
I looked them up online…
Some main points of interest to me were:
The first black & white Polaroid camera was sold way back in 1948.
The first colour Polaroid camera, The Land 100, was released in 1963 and it retailed in America for US$149.
The ones that all the new ones are now modeled on were from the late 70's
At that point Polaroid cameras were pumping, and they were at peak popularity in the 70's & 80's. But their popularity started to decline in the 90's, and although they did develop an early digital camera, the digital revolution pretty much ended Polaroid.
"Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy in 2001 its brand and assets were sold off. A successor Polaroid company formed, and the branded assets changed hands multiple times before being sold to Polish billionaire Wiaczesław Smołokowski in 2017" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Corporation
In the 60's and 70's Polaroid cameras were expensive in New
Zealand, and with our weak currency, and heavy import taxes, along with the already expensive prices of the cameras to begin with, adjusted for inflation, a Polaroid camera in New Zealand, back in the 70's would have cost the equivalent of NZ$1000 to $4000 for the camera and then there were expensive film costs on top of that.
So it's no surprise that they were fairly rare here. But I gather they were once huge in America and are becoming very trendy again now.
It turns out that there is currently a POLAROID REVIVALIST movement, and the new retro Polaroid cameras are styled to look like the old 70's ones, but they have been updated to work with blue tooth and phone apps.
They now sell in New Zealand for around NZ$400 for a high end one.
The big drawback is the cost of the film. In NZ that works out at $2 a shot! For someone like me that regularly knocks off about 200 photos in one session on my digital camera in the hope of getting half a dozen good ones, that would be $400 a day - No thanks!
But apparently kids love them and drunken party goers think they are wondrous.
The modern retro Cameras in Nt range from as little as $99 up to $399 which is not too bad, so I'm guessing the objective here is to get people Looked into buying the
film.
