1954, 1955 and 1956 GM Motorama Spinners

1954 General Motors Motorama Spinner Obverse

1954 General Motors Motorama Spinner Reverse

Each of the Motorama tokens is a spinner that has a small dot of raised metal at the center of the obverse. When placed obverse down on a hard flat surface and flicked with a fingernail, the token will spin like a top. All three spinner were made of

1955 General Motors Motorama Spinner Obverse

1955 General Motors Motorama Spinner Reverse

An arrow on the reverse indicates who will pay for the next round of drinks, coffee etc. after the spinner comes to rest. Spinners were popular 1950s 1960s advertising items passed out by merchants like GM to promote their products. In fact the entire General Motors Motorama was staged to promote their line up of cars.

1956 General Motors Motorama Spinner Obverse

1956 General Motors Motorama Spinner Reverse

The Motorrama spinner series ended with the 1956 piece. By then GM executives discovered Television was an excellent medium by which to expose the general public to each year's new automobiles.