All photos © John K. Putnam

1. Dragon Ball Z Spaceship Camera

Interchangeable slides inside this anime-themed camera allowed you to give your images special cartoon frames, as demonstrated:

Dragon Ball Z Sample Image

2. Game Boy Camera

Game Boy Camera and Printer

Amazingly, when released in 1998 this was the world’s smallest digital camera!

If you hooked up the additional Game Boy printer it also allowed you to print incredibly low-res (14,000-pixel!) Game Boy style photos:

4. The Snoopy-Matic

Snoopy-Matic

This, from 1980, is just fantastic.

5. Can cameras

Budweiser Camera

Cameras hidden inside bodies that mimicked aluminium cans were around from the 1970s to the 1990s.

5. The Pokemon Camera

Pokemon Camera

From 1999. The blurb: “Capture the action on film of your favorite Pokemon adventure as Pikachu’s immense electric charge puts the camera into focus and takes a picture! A special Pokemon border with all 150 Pokemon will magically appear on each photo.”

6. Biscuit camera

Biscuit Cam webThis delightful curio from Japan takes 2MP pictures and boasts a maximum aperture of f/2.8.

Did we mention it’s shaped like a biscuit? Can’t emphasise that part enough.

7. Lego Digital Camera

Lego CameraThree-million pixels, a built-in flash, and it’s made of Lego. What more could you ask for?

For more amazing instant cameras, check out the book “Camera Crazy” by Christopher Salyers and Buzz Poole. It’s available now from Prestel and costs £19.99.