Last Updated on 10/30/2020 by Chris Gampat
These vintage Girl Scout cameras will make you want to dig in your grandparents’ basement or attic.
The Girl Scouts of yester-decades sure had some cool stuff back in the day, including some commemorative or special edition Girl Scout cameras. We spotted a few of them in a post by Redditor MrRabinowitz during our customary Reddit rounds, and we’ve been wondering where have these been all our lives?
So, we decided to poke around the Web for more info about these cameras. A quick search led us to Vintage Girl Scout Online Museum. There, we found a lot more of these special edition shooters, from the Girl Scout Kodak all the way from 1930, to the last we know of – the Girl Scout Camera Funpack from 2001.
Based on the Vest Kodak Model B, the Girl Scout Kodak is a simple folding camera. It used 127 film, and had a Rotary T shutter and a Doublet lens with four apertures. It was made from 1929 to 1933. It features a beautiful bright green color — including the bellows — and the Girl Scouts emblem engraved in gold on the outside cover. Kodak also made other “Scout” variants of this camera: Boy Scout Kodak, which comes in olive, and Camp Fire Girl’s Kodak in brown. All of these were designed by Walter Dorwin Teague, who — you guessed it — designed the beautiful Art Deco Kodak Beau Brownie.
Next, we take a look at the Girl Scout UniveX folding camera. The UniveX AF series was introduced in 1935 as a direct competitor to the Kodak Vest Pocket cameras. Girl Scout and Boy Scout versions were also made, meant for the 8 to 16-year-old market, and were offered in the catalog for both organizations beginning in 1936. The Girl Scout UniveX sported a grey-green case with a deep green plate stamped with “Girl Scouts” and the logo. The camera uses the 00 UniveX roll film and had only two settings: Instant and Time. Its finder slides down into the folded case, and the camera only measures 2-1/8” x 4” x 7/8” when closed.
Another camera shown in the Reddit post is the Girl Scout Edition JEM Jr., an all-metal box camera from the 1940s which took eight 6×9 photos on 120 film. As we see in the photo above, there were two Girl Scout Editions made; one has a flat silver faceplate, and the other a green camera with an embossed faceplate. Both editions have the Girl Scout logo below the lens.
The last camera in the Reddit post is the Girl Scout Edition of a Falcon model from the 1940’s. It was a bakelite plastic camera with a Minivar lens, Time or Instant exposure, and a viewfinder. It took 16 photos on 127 film. While the body carries the usual black color, the front plate surrounding the lens was green and carried the “Girl Scout” label and insignia.
There are loads more of these cool Girl Scout cameras, so again, do check out the Vintage Girl Scout Online Museum to see the rest of them!