My First Camera

My photography history started back in middle school in the late 1960s. I was around 8 or 9 years old, and I would walk to school, which was only a couple of miles from home. Sometimes I went on my own, and sometimes with my older brother.

On the way, I would stop at the sweet shop across the road from the school to spend my pocket money. One of my favourites was a Mars chocolate bar. Around that time, they ran a competition called “Mars Spells Value”, where you collected letters printed on the wrappers.

The idea was to collect the letters printed on the wrappers and stick them onto a card, I think to spell out the words “Mars Spells Value”, or possibly to complete a crossword-style puzzle. I believe the letters also appeared on Marathon, Bounty, and Milky Way bars.

As I was buying sweets with my pocket money on the way to school anyway, I started collecting the wrappers. I would often find discarded ones as well, so I quickly managed to gather most of the letters I needed.

My brother also collected the letters, so we would swap any duplicates between us and completed the set quite quickly. We then sent off the letters, carefully taped onto the card, in exchange for a camera.

I don’t think I had ever held or used a camera before in my eight or nine years at that point. What we received was a cheap plastic point-and-shoot camera, probably just one step up from a disposable or single-use camera. I have a feeling it used a 126 cartridge film system.

I remember taking the camera to school and photographing my friends, as well as when we went to play sport in the local park. However, this is where my memory becomes unclear. I’m not sure if I ever actually got the pictures developed, as I seem to recall that you had to send the whole camera away.

I have no idea what eventually happened to the camera, the prints, or any negatives—if there were any. Those few days of photographs are now lost forever.

I wouldn’t get another camera for a few years after that.