I am looking for the name of a toy writing tool popular in the 70s and
80s. It is basically a clipboard with a sheet of laminate over a sheet
of carbon paper, with a plastic stylus that leaves no ink but, pulling
carbon off the carbon sheet, leaves an impression on the laminate.
Like an Etch-e-Sketch, it is by nature a temporary way of recording a
thought, image, or doodle: just lift the laminate, and whatever you
have written or drawn disappears. I remember having a Scooby-Doo
branded version of this tool. Did it have a generic name? If so, what
was it? And if not, can you recommend a phrase or name that, to the
average person today, would conjure up the right assocation? I'm
guessing there might be some on Ebay, but I have not found them.
Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 09 Mar 2005 22:19 PST

Are you sure it involved carbon? I remember a popular children's toy
called a magic (or mystic) writing pad that involved a waxy surface
with a thin sheet of transparent plastic on top of it. Here's a
description:

"Mystic writing pads are children's toys consisting of a thin sheet of
clear plastic which covers a thick waxen board. The user can write on
it with any pointed instrument, even a fingernail. The tip of the
stylus presses through the sheet of plastic and makes a faint
indentation in the wax below which appears as a dark trace through the
plastic. When the plastic sheet is lifted away from the surface of the
waxen tablet beneath, the dark traces disappear; the pad is clean
again, like a blackboard just wiped off."

http://www.swin.edu.au/sbs/media/hypertext/derrida.htm 

The Scooby-Doo version of this was called a "Scooby-Doo Magic Slate." 

Could this be your toy?

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Clarification of Question by gotisbrown3000-ga on 10 Mar 2005 06:43 PST

scooby-doo magic slate is EXACTLY the thing i remember. thanks so
much. i'm 2 for 2 on google answers and pumped about it. thanks,
pinkfreud.

I'm delighted to have been able to help you retrieve a memory of a childhood toy. 

This type of toy has been around for a long, long time. Sigmund Freud
even used it as a metaphor in an essay written in the 1920s.

"Freud too had a 'magic slate', that same magic slate we know from
when we were kids -- a cardboard-backed drawing toy that came with a
stylus, that you would draw or write things on and erase by lifting
the sheet of plastic covering the wax tablet beneath, it used to cost
50 cents or a dollar -- which Freud took as a 'model' of the psyche,
and wrote an essay about it -- though his analogy went only as far as
pointing out that underneath the grey sheet of plastic, the wax
surface retained a record of all previous drawings, like a memory, but
with all the traces overlaid and mixed up with one another, making a
monstrous mish-mash of mutant hybrids, chimeras, from the fragments of
what had earlier been graved on the slate's surface, as he felt 'The
Unconscious' did with the substance of thought, so that eventually
these hidden ruts and irregularities would begin to interfere with the
things being written on it, they'd start showing through and messing
things up. At which point a grown-up usually buys you another one, and
Freud's analogy breaks down."

Net Symposium: FleshFactor
http://www.aec.at/fleshfactor/arch/msg00161.html

As my colleague efn-ga mentioned below, eBay has a number of vintage
magic slates. You can also find new versions for sale:

eBay: "magic slate"
http://search.ebay.com/magic-slate_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8

Froogle Search: "magic slate"
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%22magic+slate%22

Happy doodling! Or perhaps, in honor of Scooby, "Rappy roodling!"

Best wishes,
pinkfreud

I'll be watching closely for the answer to this one....with 14+ nieces
and nephews- and having loved them myself as a kid- I want them now
myself!!!

I think Pinkfreud's got it.  In my experience, the standard term is
"magic slate."  There are currently 22 on eBay.

pink has the only answer I can think of