Over the past several months, almost all of the officially-licensed Polaroid photo apps have disappeared from the App Store.

A while back, I wrote a post about the best Polaroid photo apps in the App Store. I’ve had a soft spot for the Polaroid apps since the App Store was brand new and Chris Comair’s original Polaroid app, Polarize, was released in 2009. Polaroids are the original shoot-and-share photos. iPhoneography is the natural progression of that.

Polaroids combine instant satisfaction with a unique lo-fi aesthetic. The great Polaroid apps did this exceedingly well on the iPhone. The classic SX-70, Time Zero prints are the iconic example of instant analog photography. I call them “Fauxlaroids.”

For years there were many Polaroid and instant film style apps available on the App Store. Now, most of them are gone. One of the best and a favorite of mine, Polaroid FX has recently re-branded itself as InstantLab in its latest release and completely removed all Polaroid references. I’m sure the new version is fine, but the official Polaroid tie-in allowed it to use specific films in its interface which was really cool and added historical value to the app. The classic ShakeItPhoto is also still available at this time.

A New Gallery of Fauxlaroids 2019

 

So, what happened? Polaroid as a company could not profitably capitalize on the instant photography phenomenon that it single-handedly created and whiffed the onset of digital photography. In 2001, Polaroid was declared bankrupt and shut down operations. Its brand and assets were sold off. Among the assets that were sold were the Polaroid name, distinctive color branding, and the trademarks to the shape of the unique Polaroid films. Eventually, these assets ended up with partnership that included the family that owns the Minnesota Twins baseball team. In order to recoup their investment, the new owners licensed the Polaroid name and intellectual property to third parties, many of whom produced Polaroid-branded items that had no connection at all to instant photography. In my opinion, this tarnished and diluted the brand.

Over the years, a few photo apps licensed the Polaroid brand and the intellectual property. These photo apps which I’d mentioned in my previous story re-created most authentically the original Polaroid experience. They were licensed to use the Polaroid name, the color branding, the look and names of the films, and the shapes of the distinctive film borders. All in all, these apps were really slick and a great throwback shooting experience on the iPhone.

There were many other instant-style photo apps that were unlicensed. Often times these apps created effects that were close but not exactly matching the Polaroid aesthetic. This was done mainly for legal reasons. Most of the time this meant that the borders of these images were just different enough to avoid a legal smackdown. Sometimes they looked close. More often they didn’t. Regardless, they were just wrong.

In 2008, The Impossible Project was formed. It began as a global effort to preserve the photography and legacy of the original Polaroid instant photography phenomenon as well as the only company manufacturing film for select original Polaroid cameras. In May 2017, Oskar Smolokowski, The Impossible Project’s CEO and largest shareholder, bought the Polaroid brand and IP assets property. The group who saved the essence of Polaroid now owned the company.

I have not reached out to PLR IP Holdings, LLC or any of the app developers but what I suspect is happening is that as licenses expire, they are not being renewed either by Polaroid or the app developers themselves. In the long run this will rebuild goodwill and preserve the integrity of the brand by ridding us of cheap, Polaroid-branded DVD players and the like.

Unless there is a renaissance of official Polaroid photo apps, this could spell the end of real-looking Polaroid re-creations on the iPhone. I don’t plan on ever updating or deleting ShakeItPhoto or Polaroid FX, the last two great Polaroid apps standing.