[HN Gopher] Taking apart the 2010 Fisher Price re-released Music... ___________________________________________________________________ Taking apart the 2010 Fisher Price re-released Music Box Record Player Author : fortran77 Score : 379 points Date : 2021-10-30 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | pengaru wrote: | One of the worse aspects of growing old is having to watch things | previously done well and delivering genuine thoughtful value | mutate into illusory branded trash done just well enough to | fleece consumers. | dejawu wrote: | A friend of mine from engineering school had pretty much this | exact idea for a joke record player: Require the user to provide | a record and place the needle on it, but then use image- | recognition to identify the label/cover art and stream the album | while the record spun uselessly. | | Seeing someone do this, but unironically and for a real product | specifically meant for humans who are actively developing their | sense of how the world around the works, feels somewhere between | cynical and outright deceptive. It reminds me of the Mechanical | Turk (the original one, not the Amazon service): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk - a machine | deliberately designed to mislead. | taddevries wrote: | I have to think this is mostly due to modern toy factories and | their standard tooling. You'd probably have a hard time finding a | factory that could mass produce the old toy because that's just | not how toys are made today. | jldl805 wrote: | I feel like you're about half correct here. For instance, most | of these factories aren't "toy factories" they are "injection | molding" or "pcb" or "electronic assembly" factories. | | I would invite you to submit any examples of how you think | modern toys are made of "mostly" standard tooling... that's not | how this works. China has more mold designers, mold makers, and | mold shops in many towns than other countries have within their | borders. | | I do agree with you that the old clockwork motor would be too | expensive to manufacture now, but I think you should keep | thinking about the rest of your thesis. | MarkusWandel wrote: | There's also the modern version of the See 'n Say. The original | one is mechanically brilliant. The new one has much better sound | quality and a flip-over semicircle that gives it two full circles | of things to point to. Is it better? Hard to say. | | On the other hand some modern electronic toys are brilliant. The | Leapfrog one with the 8x8 LED array and the light pen is | absolutely brilliant in how much play value it gets out of that | simple hardware and already feels like a classic. | Symbiote wrote: | I remember playing with the original, although it wasn't mine. A | friend must have had it. | | It would be interesting to know the cost in 1980, and compare it | (with inflation) to the current cost. | mbreese wrote: | That's a good point. I wonder what kind of tolerances were | needed to make the original records? It probably wasn't | terribly tight, but still necessary to make a playable record. | Versus a simple microcontroller that can play any number of | songs and very limited physical tolerances. | | The electric version might actually be cheaper to produce. | Jtsummers wrote: | "any number of songs" = 10, in this case, and up to 16 but | the extra 6 can't be delivered since there's no update | mechanism. Versus the original which could play a much larger | variety of songs based on the records themselves. Presumably | using a music box like mechanism, not a vinyl record style | mechanism, which greatly loosens the quality constraints on | the records (based on listening to a recording of the | original). | pronoiac wrote: | The original is very similar to a music box. It's likely | doable to make your own disc for the original using 3D | printing. | [deleted] | mdorazio wrote: | I, too, was very curious about this and was able to find out | that when it launched in 1971, the record player was $6.85 [1]. | That's about $46 in today's money. So I guess the question is | how many parents today would pay that much for the "good" | version of this toy in comparison to how many will pay $10 less | for the fraud version. I'm guessing the business case points | strongly toward the latter being revenue maximizing. | | [1] | https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1971-Sea... | | Side note: like others here, I loved the hell out of this thing | as a kid and I'm pretty sure we got it as a hand-me-down from | my older cousin. It still worked like a champ after many years | of abuse. | dehrmann wrote: | I'm surprised they still make this. Usually kids toys are modeled | after what they see adults doing. Some people still have | turntables, but it's rare enough that I wasn't expecting there to | be much demand for this. | Jtsummers wrote: | Nostalgia. Parents and grandparents who remember it will buy | new toys based on their toys from childhood, regardless of the | modern sensibilities. | rootusrootus wrote: | Exactly. A good business always has to remember who the | actual customer is. For kids, in many cases the actual | customer is mom & dad, so make sure your product is aimed at | them. Same with selling software to a business, the customer | is management not the engineers who will actually use it. | lofatdairy wrote: | That's a good point. lmao what a weird hauntology. the past | generation bought the toy for their children because of its | resemblance to everyday items in their lives, and the next | generation buys a facsimile for their children for its | resemblance to the toy from their childhood. i wonder how | many iterations will the chain continue | AtlasBarfed wrote: | Yeah, the sad fact of baby toys is that they are | fundamentally selling to the adults, not to the tots. | | The tot phase is pretty fast, so parents don't really seem to | get a feel for what is a "good" baby toy in time. | | I really wish there would be more general study of this | rather than being at the mercy of a sales market that | fundamentally doesn't have the baby in mind, mostly just the | parents buying the stuff. | | But then again, "learning acceleration" in babies is probably | bunk anyway. | t0mas88 wrote: | My mother is a developmental psychologist specialised in | babies / toddlers. According to her most research showed | that behavior of the parents was a far far bigger factor in | the speed of development. And on the toys side of things | that it's mostly about allowing for creativity in play, | meaning kids want to invent their own game with whatever | you give them. | | Simple wooden building blocks or a stack of cups that fit | in each other already allow for that for early age, no need | for more advanced toys / battery driven things. | Freak_NL wrote: | We have a turntable, and our 21/2 year old listens to records | on it. He's not putting the records on himself just yet of | course, but it's nice to have some technology where the | physical aspect is so prominent -- records have two sides, you | have to manually place the needle and stop the turntable after | listening, and records hold a specific album. | | He'd love a toy like that (the original that is). | | On a related note: it's nice that some old records with | children's content are actually really good, and often much | nicer -- slower, more focussed, and with better articulation -- | than modern content for his demographic. Although I admit that | the much-loved audio play about a field mouse visiting her | mousy friend who lives in the city to learn all about the | sounds in a family's house is a bit... anachronistic. The | shower, electrical razor, and hoover are fine, but the | typewriter and landline telephone may be a tad confusing, and | the baker who hawks his bread at the door hasn't shown up in | reality yet (but fast-food delivery is a close-ish thing). His | parents both use mechanical keyboards though, so the sound | isn't too far-fetched. | | People will buy this toy mostly for the nostalgic feeling. I | just don't get why Fisherprice didn't just remake the battery- | less original though; it would have hit just the right note | nowadays. The remake just damages their brand. | amelius wrote: | Skeuomorphism at work ... :( | smashed wrote: | As an 80's kid I have fond memories of this toy. Being all | mechanical you could explore and marvel at it. | | I remember trying to get the spin faster/slower, stopping the | spring, etc. | | Since it required no batteries it was always working, even when | you found it at the bottom of toy bin after months/years. | | This modern version is a complete scam, especially since the | outside look seems absolutely identical to the original. I'd be | very disappointed if I bought one for a toddler, only to realize | when unboxing it's crap. | | By the way, we still have the original toy from my childhood. | It's been passed around to relatives, but last I heard, it still | works after what must be almost 40 years. | timr wrote: | I also spent many hours futzing with one of these. The music- | playing mechanism in the arm was particularly interesting, for | some reason. I remember spending time plucking out songs using | a screwdriver. | cptskippy wrote: | > This modern version is a complete scam | | This. It preys upon the childhood memories of parents and | grandparents. Literally everything that made the original such | a fond memory is gone and what you're left with is a cheap | trick that had none of the lasting appeal of the original. | randomstring wrote: | This new version of the Fisher-Price Record Player is | heartbreaking. I learned so much from trying to understand how it | worked. Concepts like stored energy: experimenting with trying to | over-wind, under-wide, a few turns, many turns, slowly adding | pressure to the winding knob until it would start playing and try | to maintain just enough pressure to play. Physically slowing and | speeding up the turntable to change to the tempo. Trying to | intentionally misaligning the head to play out of tune. Turning | it on it's side, upside down, trying to peek at the teeth on the | head and manually play individual notes. All at an age before I | could read. That toy was indestructible, because if it weren't I | would have torn it down to individual components (just like my | very expensive 6 million dollar man action figure, to the great | chagrin of my parents). It wouldn't be until much later I'd have | to tools to dissemble one, and by then I was taking apart real | record plays. | | This toy is a good analog for a real record player and with | grooves that move a needle and play sound encoded on the disk. | Leading to understanding of sound waves. | | This new toy is a mix of new and old tech. How can a per-literate | child be expected to decipher binary encodings and how they map | to individual songs? What deeper understanding of how things work | are within the grasp of a child that cannot yet use a | screwdriver, wire cutters, and a volt meter? | | This new toy is boring. Once you learn how to turn it on, it can | have no appeal to a child exposed to much better music players | all around them: cell phones, iPads, computers, tvs. This is just | a piece of plastic and e-waste destined for the landfill, | purchased by some sentimental old timer who has fond memories of | the original F-P record player. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Yup. I'm pissed by this. And I never even owned a toy like | that. | | The new toy is just fucking up with kids' development. It | literally boils down to a 10-button panel for selecting which | song to play. All the things that make it look like a turntable | are nonfunctional lies. There's no direct relationship between | what disk you have in it, and whether it's turning, because the | music isn't even encoded on it in the first place. The disk is | just representing two possible states, and the turning is for | show. | | How did they imagine a kid will process such a toy? How much | disappointment will a child feel when they realize, after | trying to physically play with the turning disks, that it's | just a dummy? | | They could've made this toy with a single disk with a motor | under it, and 10 buttons to pick songs, and it would be better | because _it wouldn 't lie_. It would look like a record player, | not _pretend to be one_. Or perhaps I 'm just angry because the | old model _was an actual record player_ , so we have a clear | example of them having a superior design available (and most | likely cheaper to produce), and then _choosing to make it | worse_ for re-release. | | Anyway, there's a software analogy in here, but I'm not in a | mood to be able to write a coherent and short summary of it. | Suffice it to say: the continuous dumbing down of software all | across the board is sometimes called "Fisher-Pricing the UI". | Never before have I felt this term is so apt as I feel now. | pen2l wrote: | As well, the beautiful vulnerability and realness, the | imperfections, the notes sometimes slightly flat or sharp | because of mechanical aberrations -- they were wonderful to | observe. The humming sounds of the windings, the realness of | it. The tactile dots, the understanding of how they related to | musical notes. What a thing it was to behold, an authenticity | that the child in us could always appreciate and be impressed | and moved by. | agumonkey wrote: | We're still in the wave of digital purity (and the VR/meta | chapter won't help). Come back in 50 years for a | reappreciation of analog, complex, fragile and non linear. By | this time digital computing will probably be chaotic too. | grishka wrote: | I mean some people are already getting nostalgic about CRTs | for being so analog. And it's been what, only ~15 years | since LCDs and other types of digital flat-panel displays | started becoming cheap and widespread? | agumonkey wrote: | I'm part of that group (I ever regretted breaking my | beloved mitsu diamondtron[0]) but still the mainstream is | massively about digital purity, beyond biological retina | sampling and displaying .. in that era good luck talking | about the "value" of imperfect media, it's like fighting | a tsunami to me. | | [0] to cope, I scavenged a few portable TVs from the 90s | to toy with the small tubes. | nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: | On the other hand there are things like this: | | https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/upperstory/spintronics-... | | Now it will be up-to parents to decide whether they want to | bring up an iPhone consumer kid or more of a PC creative kid. | amelius wrote: | Side note. How is an iPhone not a "personal" computer? | TeMPOraL wrote: | It's not about being a _personal_ computer. An iPhone may | be personal, but it 's hardly a _computer_. | | I mean, _technically_ it is, but then so is the microwave | timer controller. | | In terms of user interaction, an iPhone does its best to be | an appliance, not a general-purpose computer. So do Android | smartphones - lest one thing it's an Apple problem, it's | not. It's a modern computing problem. | grishka wrote: | > So do Android smartphones | | At least you get to run arbitrary software on them as a | standard feature. And on many, the bootloader is | unlockable, so you could root the thing and/or tinker | with the OS. | | The modern computing problem isn't this particular thing, | it lies higher. It's presuming that the user is stupid | and can't possibly be trusted with figuring stuff out and | making their own informed decisions. Won't be surprised | if people who design software like this consider every | setting a liability. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _The modern computing problem isn 't this particular | thing, it lies higher. It's presuming that the user is | stupid and can't possibly be trusted with figuring stuff | out and making their own informed decisions._ | | I agree with that. It's pretty much an unquestioned axiom | in the industry. You can see it mentioned in almost every | article or book about writing software, doing UI design | or UX work. The user is stupid. They're incapable of | thinking for themselves, figuring things out, having | their own goals. They have to be carefully guided so they | follow the exact path the software prescribes for them, | and incentivized along the way with "engagement | patterns", lest they get bored mid way. | | > _Won 't be surprised if people who design software like | this consider every setting a liability._ | | Which is funny, because the first thing every single | piece of software on this planet does, is disclaiming any | and all liability for anything. | | So the kind of liability they feel, I believe, is just | that of getting bad press over some reviewers deciding | something is too confusing, leading to reduced sales. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > It's presuming that the user is stupid and can't | possibly be trusted with figuring stuff out and making | their own informed decisions. | | It's even more malicious than that. The corporations and | governments are hostile towards users. They lock the | computer down so we can't do anything that harms business | and government interests. Can't copy or share files. | Can't use strong cryptography the government can't crack. | | These people believe computers are too subversive to | allow the masses unrestricted access to them. They would | rather we have nothing but restricted appliances that | obey them instead of us. The computer doesn't serve us, | it serves them as a tool to control us. | dabeeeenster wrote: | Please stop | grishka wrote: | It's a general-purpose computer inside but it was | intentionally handicapped by Apple to be an appliance that | only does what Apple approves of. | matheusmoreira wrote: | The iPhone _is_ a personal device but it 's not a computer. | It merely has a computer inside it. What sets it apart from | a real computer is the fact it only does what manufacturer | designed it to do. They're the ones programming the | computer, not the users. So the iPhone is just a device | that does cool things. Like one of those nice electronic | watches with a ton of cool functions but you get to | download new features from Apple's store. | Philip-J-Fry wrote: | That is such an amazing idea. Wish I had kids so I could | learn with them! | mhb wrote: | Or "DIY Hand-cranked Music Box Wooden Box + Hole Puncher + | Paper Tapes": https://www.ebay.com/itm/182794446978 | tarsinge wrote: | Tinkering with a computer is not the only real creativity, | you can also actually use it. GarageBand would have been a | dream when I was a child. | prideout wrote: | The Spintronics video mentions the simulation of resistors, | capacitors, batteries...but not logic gates. It doesn't seem | to teach the magic of boolean logic at all, which is a bit | disappointing. (but not as disappointing as the Fisher Price | music player!) | themdonuts wrote: | I got stuck on the 6 million dollar action figure part and | ignored all the rest afterwards. What's the story? | ZiiS wrote: | An action figure of the "six million dollar man" (from a tv | show). Though sadly I can't rule out a toy fetching that now | adays. | robbiet480 wrote: | Foone has noticed this submission and is not pleased | https://twitter.com/foone/status/1454524960488132614?s=21 | JasonFruit wrote: | Foone does cool things but clearly has high expectations for | their own control of how crowds of people will discuss stuff | that is, after all, out in public. Foone should maybe try a | screened subscription-only paywall and see if that satisfies | them more. | scrollaway wrote: | I'm not sure what Foone is going on about. There isn't a | single comment about the twitter format here except for | someone linking to an unrolled version. It's just praise | about their tweets and content, and shitting on fisher price | for building a crappier product. | | Actually makes for a nice change for once. On-topic | conversation! | fortran77 wrote: | Part of the value of the original was kids could see and feel how | it worked. That made it a fascinating toy. It's all been lost. | BadCookie wrote: | Exactly right. That's why I bought an "antique" one on eBay for | my young son a few years ago. I had zero desire for the new | garbage version. It was maybe twice as expensive, but 100% | worth it to me. | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | > kids could see and feel how it worked. That made it a | fascinating toy | | I assume all of us here on HN are the type-of-person who as a | child would have been fascinated about how mechanical and | electromechanical toys and gizmos worked - and probably | disassembled the thing to our parents' chagrin and figured out | how it works (and hopefully put it back together correctly!) | and ended the day with a sense of satisfaction from learning | something new. | | ...and then I'm remind myself that _we_ are not like everyone | else: I 'm still able to vividly remember the things I did with | my mechanical/electro toys to see and try to understand how | they worked, but that most of the other kids my age didn't: | their objective was simply to use the toy as entertainment or | make-believe-play or the like - not as an object of curiosity - | and they weren't particularly interested in any explanation I'd | have for them (it didn't help that I wouldn't have asked them | if they wanted to hear my explanation in the first place | though... heh) | | So for us, this digital-fake of a classic toy is an insult to | our imagined younger-selves of the 21st century, but when I | think about this ultra-modern toy from the perspective of | someone just after something of solely nostalgia value - and a | modern-day kid uninterested now (and shall most-likely forever- | be uninterested) in how things work then indeed none of what | we're griping about here matters - in fact it's the opposite: | this 2010 remake is demonstrably tougher and more resilient to | damage and wear than the mechanical original despite being | superficially the same - given we're in the minority overall | (...I think?) then this new design is objectively better as far | as moral-utilitarianism is concerned. | | ...and it's not like Fischer-Price is selling this remake as a | toy of interest to kids with a curiosity for things mechanical. | They're not being totally dishonest. | ummwhat wrote: | When I was a kid the "toy" to take apart was a disposable | camera. The sort you used to buy on vacation and then drop | off to have the film developed without getting the camera | back. I discovered after charging it that touching the | capicator gives a nice electrical shock. I spent a great deal | of effort teaching this painful lesson to anyone I could | trick into learning it. | | The objects of curiosity don't need to be a toy, or even | meant for children. Anything that can be disassembled will be | disassembled by a curious child. | | Too bad it's no longer possible for end users to disassemble | mobile phones. | Jtsummers wrote: | It's a tradeoff, though. The loss of explorability means that | kids no longer have (with these newer toys) the same | opportunity for exercising their curiosity that the older | toys permitted. My sister never took our toys apart and | reassembled them, that was all on me. With a toy like this | one I would have (and probably did, with whatever equivalent | I had) taken it apart and seen how the music box worked (the | metal tines, the bumps on the record corresponding to notes, | etc.). The new version removes that opportunity, taken or | not. That is a loss. | scrollaway wrote: | But play is supposed to be a learning tool. If a toy's only | value is "push a button for a predefined thing to happen", | there is no opportunity for exploration. Might as well give | the toddler an iphone. | | I agree with you, "we" are probably not like most people. But | taking the opportunity to experiment away is such a huge | loss. Giving a kid the opportunity to learn on their own is | so important. It's not just the one toy, you need to give | them loads of different opportunities like these. They'll | pick up on some. | | Maybe i never would have experimented with this particular | toy as a kid. For me, it was getting a screwdriver and taking | old electronics apart (and the challenge of putting them back | together and still having them work!) that sparked my | curiosity. Plenty of things did not, however... But the point | is, i was given opportunities. | johnchristopher wrote: | > I assume all of us here on HN are the type-of-person who as | a child would have been fascinated about how mechanical and | electromechanical toys and gizmos worked - and probably | disassembled the thing to our parents' chagrin and figured | out how it works (and hopefully put it back together | correctly!) and ended the day with a sense of satisfaction | from learning something new. | | Yeah. But no, that's a stereotype. | | I hated my mecano things, it was too hard to play with. I | enjoyed storytelling with my LEGOs much more, my creations | were just bare bones scaffoldings for the flesh my | imagination would put around it. | | I still work in IT and tear stuff apart every day. | | With that being said it still saddens me they are | digitalising full mechanical toys. It's surely rose-tinted | glasses but it looked so much cooler. | dangle1 wrote: | Yeah, this brought back an early memory of my sparkling new | brain examining the mechanism of the original version of this | toy with my eyes and fingers without any words to describe what | I was learning. Just some kind of sense of mastery that I | couldn't communicate, but made me feel more confident about my | understanding of the world. | | It seems pretty cynical to market this in order to appeal to | people like me with memories like this, with a huge dimension | of the enrichment value stripped away. | handrous wrote: | Lots of great 70s and 80s toys that are still around are | terrible. Super soaker? A joke, premium prices and way worse | than squirt guns 1/4 the price, which are themselves not as | good as early Super Soakers. Tank's not even removable which | means it's basically not even the same sort of product at all-- | I'm sure the gaskets added too much to the production cost. | Loopin' Louie? Motor's too weak, and it's lighter, so it | doesn't work as well. They even managed to make Hungry Hungry | Hippos suck. Rock 'em Sock 'em? Really bad compared to the | original (you can find the original at flea markets sometimes-- | it's _so_ much better, this isn 't just nostalgia). The usual | approach seems to be to cut vital features, shrink everything | 10-30% (it's sometimes hard to tell if you don't have the | original to compare it to, but it's _really_ obvious when you | do), and make all the plastic paper thin. | | I think it's part of most things that aren't computers getting | worse over the last few decades. Shit would be double the price | if they still "made it like they used to". Even fast-food pizza | --Pizza Hut's _in fact_ way worse than it was even in the mid | 90s (they 've had at least two major reformulations of the | sauce, for one thing, getting worse each time), but if you find | a different pizza place that makes pizza around 90s PH quality | it'll be 50+% more expensive. | | But yeah, inflation's only low-single-digits percent a year. | LOL sure. | underwater wrote: | Our kids were gifted "Guess Who" (a game which is problematic | in a whole host of other ways). I was shocked that it was | thin plastic and cardboard. The while thing felt disposable. | | I feel that this must be a strategy used on toys that were | previously popular. They're not going to return to being the | popular must-have item that people will pay a premium for, | but there is residual value in the marketing campaign from | the 80s. So the toy companies push the build quality as low | as they can and milk the last good will from the brand by | making it a cheap impulse purchase. | | To your larger point, there are still high quality toys | around. You just avoid the big Toys R Us style stores and go | to an independent or smaller toy story. Plan Toys and Green | Toys stick out to me as two brands which felt consistently | high quality and were widely available. | mustacheemperor wrote: | From what I can tell pump to charge water guns like the | original super soaker simply don't exist anymore, only pump | to fire. I think you're right that the gaskets/hardware | necessary for the pressure tank add a lot of cost, and I | wonder if there's a liability factor as well. Nothing you can | buy today can fire with nearly the same power as a super | soaker since there's no charged pressure tank. I had kind of | assumed there'd be some small brand selling "classic" water | gun designs but a quick google looks like most people only | recommend vintage. | quesera wrote: | > But yeah, inflation's only low-single-digits percent a | year. LOL sure. | | Compounded inflation/interest is pretty powerful. | | 2% compounded over 25 years (to mark your "mid-90s" | reference) would be a 64% increase, which lines up with your | 50+% pretty directly. | | Agreed that Pizza Hut sucks now. I sometimes wonder which has | changed -- the me, or the thing. Good to know that at least | with Pizza Hut, it's not all in my head. | | My personal pet peeve is the plastic playing pieces of board | games. Formerly well-weighted and painted, now thin cheap and | with a bad sticker. How much can plastic playing pieces | actually cost? | | I wonder if Monopoly still ships with cast metal pieces... | tyleo wrote: | I agree, I'd pay a little more for a mechanical version. | | If this trend continues even wooden blocks will some day come | with batteries :p | johnsonap wrote: | and will also have bluetooth | handrous wrote: | I seem to recall looking into wooden blocks for my kids when | they were a little younger, and finding not that they need | batteries, but the new normal-tier wooden blocks are now | kinda shit--small, uneven finish and size consistency isn't | good, et c.--and you have to start looking into niche | "premium" toys to get good ones. | | We got some of those cube ones with the letters and numbers | at one point, and they were noticeably smaller and worse- | finished than the ones I had as a kid in the 80s, which I'm | sure were just the _only_ blocks of that type that some cheap | local store had and were probably the same quality as _all_ | such blocks on the market at the time, not something special. | The newer ones looked very similar in a photo, but were | missing lots of textures (kinda, you know, a big deal to | babies and early toddlers) and details that mine had, and the | paint chipped more easily (probably a thinner coat, I guess, | plus probably just lower-quality paint). | | We bought our first kid a rolling walker/phone thing with | some other features--yeah, electronic crap, but at least this | one had a volume setting, unlike many modern ones that are | just fixed to "deafen your child" with no other options | unless you break out a soldering iron. By ~4 years later, | between seeing other people's version of the same thing--same | brand and all--they bought a couple years after ours, and | seeing newer version at the store when toy shopping, we'd | noticed that the "same" product, which looked nearly | identical, had had a couple revisions, each one making parts | that used to move or be interactive fixed & dormant, and | otherwise lowering the quality. | smegcicle wrote: | and nowadays you could 3dprint new records for it | Jtsummers wrote: | I have a music box that uses a paper tape, it was an extra as | I was making a gift for a family member and Thinkgeek (long | before the Gamestop acquisition) accidentally sent me two. It | was actually a lot of fun to make extra songs for it, the toy | becomes interactive for the player. Which is a much better | thing for kids than something that can only ever play 10 | songs, and which they cannot alter in any meaningful sense. | ReactiveJelly wrote: | Re: vinyl records | | Has anyone proven / disproven Benn Jordan's video about why vinyl | is basically poisonous? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ2czFuIYmQ | | I haven't watched it for a while but the summary is: | | - Vinyl records outgas harmful things that you can detect with | air quality meters. (VOCs I think) | | - You can't dispose of them because they can't be recycled and | aren't supposed to go in landfills. So buying new records from | new bands violates the "reduce, reuse, recycle" principle | | "It's just that it's _so_ lame and uncool to shit on vinyl..." | | "This is just my objective opinion based on a whole lotta | research... If you're an avid collector whose peepee hurts after | watching this video, understand that my peepee hurts a whole lot | more." | h2odragon wrote: | I will guess your average human emits more hazardous VOCs than | a vinyl record. | | I'd put this down to "someone thinks something is cool and fun! | we have to show them how wrong they are!" | ReactiveJelly wrote: | > I will guess your average human emits more hazardous VOCs | than a vinyl record. | | As I recall, when Benn did the test, putting the record back | in its sleeve caused the air quality to go back to normal. | | So whatever VOCs he is emitting, I don't think his meter | picked them up. | | > I'd put this down to "someone thinks something is cool and | fun! we have to show them how wrong they are!" | | Re-check the part about "how much my peepee hurts". I really | want to like vinyls, but I'm never going to buy one if | they're basically Forever Chemicals that got grandfathered in | by being part of pop culture decades ago. And Benn says in | the video that he could stand to make a lot of money if he | sold out and had vinyls of his work manufactured. | crtasm wrote: | But was "normal" based on an earlier meter reading with him | in the room? Or a proven baseline that applies in general? | mStreamTeam wrote: | Have any evidence to back that claim up? | | And even of its true, reducing VOCs still sounds like a | positive goal | nemo wrote: | I'd recommend you read up a more about vinyl - you really | aren't treating a very dangerous material seriously enough. | PVCs are highly toxic, and at this point there are many | regulations to ban their use in plumbing, consumer goods, and | especially toys because they are so poisonous. Vinyl records | are a hold-out. They leach high levels of phthalates into the | air quite quickly which are highly toxic, far, far more toxic | than the typical emissions of your average human. | | http://www.safemarkets.org/toxic-chemicals-in- | products/pvc/v... | [deleted] | ashtonkem wrote: | Yes, but I'd be much more worried about vinyl flooring, | trim, windows, and shower curtains than records. | nemo wrote: | Wise to not have any of the stuff anywhere. The off- | gassing from records is nearly instantaneous and reaches | measurable levels where it's dangerous within minutes - | having the extra surface area for off-gassing from the | grooves makes it much worse. A vinyl collection is | certainly better than other vinyl things like you | mentioned since an album won't off-gas much in its | sleeve, but playing one will definitely do a bit of liver | damage if you're near it. | ashtonkem wrote: | I'm sure vinyl records off gas, but I'm extremely dubious | about the liver damage you propose. With all substances | the poison is in the dose; you'd need a huge vinyl | collection to match the amount of vinyl typical in a | typical home with a shower curtain and vinyl windows, let | alone one that uses vinyl flooring. | ricardobeat wrote: | > playing one will definitely do a bit of liver damage if | you're near it | | That sounds a bit exaggerated. There is evidence that | _occupational exposure to PVC compounds_ causes liver | damage or cancer, and that's mostly regarding workers in | production lines. You'd have to be closely sniffing your | record collection for hours on end to get the same | effect. | | If this was true you'd have entire generations from the | 19x0s suffering from liver failure, as vinyl was the only | media available, with billions of records sold. | vincentpants wrote: | Confirmed. Depending on pvc's point in it's lifecycle, it's | either offgassing hydrogen chloride which turns into | hydrochloric acid when inhaled, all the way to releasing dioxin | when incinerated, and dioxin is considered the most congeners. | You can get the same effect when burning your pcb. One of the | deadliest fires in US history was the MGM Grand fire in Las | Vegas and iirc all of the fatalities were due to the fumes from | the burning pvc carpet and none were heat related. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Grand_fire | actionoffice wrote: | Big ignore. | jolux wrote: | This guy was unable to replicate his result and casts some | aspersions on the accuracy of the metering technology, however | he did find lead residue on one record: | https://youtu.be/gx5B44YeRpY | code_duck wrote: | I'm not sure about records, but it is well established that | vinyl flooring emits various toxic compounds. Apparently it's | mostly other ingredients besides the PVC. | | https://floortechie.com/is-vinyl-flooring-toxic/ | | Just search "vinyl off gassing". | | Here's an EPA pdf purely about vinyl chloride: | https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/sites/production/files... | golemotron wrote: | That music box record player is a perfect metaphor for | distributed supply chains in global manufacturing. In fact, one | could say that it is a representation of them. | russellbeattie wrote: | why is this a twitter thread? why not a blog? | AndrewDucker wrote: | Because that's how the author chose to write it. | | Because that's where the audience they write for is. | | Because they prefer Twitter threads to blog posts. | | Because they get more readers that way. | | (And probably anyone here can come up with some more reasons | that might be true if they put their minds to it.) | | But mostly, the format someone chooses to make this available | in is the least interesting thing about it. | jsrcout wrote: | > So yeah. The original one required you to crank it up to spin | the disc, because spinning the disc was vital to the operation of | the original music box. | | > The modern "classic" one requires you to crank it up, because | it won't start playing until you've cranked it up. | | Maybe I'm just cranky today. But this quote perfectly | encapsulates so much of what's wrong with a lot of modern | technology. | xyzal wrote: | cranking it up increases 'engagement', probably | FridayoLeary wrote: | the limits of a design should be when it actively makes an | object _less_ functional. Car designers in particular blithely | ignore this. This is another good example. | fragmede wrote: | Skeuomorphism is a time honored tradition, eg folders in a | filesystem. Users often find its use is annoying, but other | times it's a necessary analogy for users to make sense of the | UX. | bink wrote: | This isn't just an artistic decision though. The product | gives the impression that it's an actual functioning record | player, like the old one. | TeMPOraL wrote: | No. This toy "gives the impression that it's an actual | functioning record player", even though it isn't. The old | one _was an actual functioning record player_. Or at least | a cross between a record player and a music box. But the | point is: the old one was actually playing music off the | disks, the new one only pretends to do it. | cabalamat wrote: | This isn't skeumorphism, it's just fake. | rgarrett88 wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph | | >A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, /'skju:@,mo:rf, | 'skju:oU-/)[1][2] is a derivative object that retains | ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that | were necessary in the original. Examples include pottery | embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar | pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates | the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar. | lostlogin wrote: | An adult fake design is the Linea Mini espresso machine by | La Marzocco. I'd like one, but having a fake brew paddle on | a machine in that price range makes me back away. The | paddle is just an on/off switch. | | https://international.lamarzocco.com/en/machine/linea-mini/ | kube-system wrote: | It is an intentionally skeuomorphic design, critical to its | entertainment value as a toy. A simple box with a play | button would not fulfill the same goals. | Bluecobra wrote: | The updated Fisher Price Tape Recorder got a similar treatment, | the original played real cassettes but the modern one does not. | | https://www.walmart.com/ip/Fisher-Price-Classics-Play-Tape-R... | mcphage wrote: | With the original Fisher-Price cash register, the 3 different | denominations were of different sizes, so each only fit into | its own slot. With their modern remake, the 3 different | denominations are all the same size. | | That's the thing about their remakes, all across the board-- | they look similar to the originals, but lost their a lot of the | details and functionality that made them charming. As a | Buffalonian I still have a soft spot for Fisher-Price, but | these are just disappointing. | kps wrote: | Fisher-Price once made a toy camcorder that used audio | cassettes. A 90 minute tape held 11 minutes of video, | monochrome 120x90 at 15fps. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL2000 | neom wrote: | Am I the only one who loves the meme that Foone hates being on | the front page and always ends up on the front page? :D | jaynetics wrote: | I'm not sure how common this is in other countries, but here in | Germany we have quite a few "water playgrounds". There are some | pumps in the sand, sometimes small aqueducts and the likes, so | during summer, the kids can play with water. The pumps used to be | real pumps. Now they are electronic. They have a sensor to detect | how fast the handle is moving and at a certain speed you'll hear | a clicking sound, a valve opens and the water starts flowing. | | I think some children will realize how these things work. They | might start to find them dumb if they find out that the strenuous | repetitive movement is in fact unnecessary. At least to me it | feels like a dishonest contraption and I'd prefer if they simply | put a button on it. | drtz wrote: | I got one of these for my kids around 2014 and was also hugely | disappointed. I realized very quickly that it was just a gimmick | to lure the Gen-Xers and Millenials who remember these from their | childhood. | | I, too, was disgusted that it took batteries but you still had to | wind the knob, but I was even more offended by the awful staticky | sound from the tiny speaker. | | Like foone, I also got a kick out of playing with the switches | and seeing what happened when you held the disc stil, but I was | never curious enough to open it up. I'm glad I didn't, though -- | I think the sight of an actual music box would have broken my | heart. | thunderbong wrote: | Better readability - | | https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1454230585933631488.html | johnsonap wrote: | God I love foone | junon wrote: | And foone hates HN and wishes his tweets would stop being | posted here lol. | blamazon wrote: | Summary of stated justifications: [1] | | * Foone likes to do tweet storms and not blogs and some | people on HN have a "Why isn't this a blog?" sentiment which | is bothersome to foone. | | * HN scraping bots on twitter mention foone which is | bothersome to foone. | | * HN community frequently assumes he/him for foone. Foone | goes by they/them. This does not seem to bother foone on its | own, but HN commenters correcting HN commenters about how | foone goes by they/them sometimes leads to grammatical | argument about using they as a singular pronoun which is | bothersome to foone. | | * Generally, discourse beyond "whoops sorry!" about | he/him/they/them is bothersome to foone. | | * Elements of HN discourse represent larger problems of male- | dominant sexism that are trenchant in technology, which are | bothersome to foone. | | [1] | https://twitter.com/foone/status/1440375176604966924?lang=en | kelnos wrote: | On the plus side, at least right now as I write this (the | post has been up for 5 hours, with 96 comments), there is, | in this HN post: | | * No mention of the Twitter thread being better as a blog | post, and someone has already posted a Thread Reader App | link with the thread unrolled. | | * A single instance of someone getting corrected for | misgendering, but with no follow-ups or toxic discussion | around it. | | So maybe things are getting better? | | But really, though, I just kinda find foone's annoyance | about being posted on HN to be annoying in and of itself. | The bot @-mentions I agree are annoying (and I don't know | of a good solution; playing ban whack-a-mole every time a | new one pops up is lame to have to do), but the other bits | have a simple solution: don't read the HN comments. I know | sometimes it's hard to resist the temptation, but I | personally appreciate these foone threads getting posted | here (as I don't really use Twitter much, so I wouldn't | otherwise see them). And it's just a little weird to | criticize people for linking to something you posted on the | web, since linking is what the web is for. | polytely wrote: | Yes honestly one of the most entertaining follows on twitter | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | How does Foone spend so much time on all these "here's | something interesting I found, now it's a 12-hour-long deep- | dive into something I never thought I could care passionately | about" things and still have a job? | | Turing's living the dream... (the family name has to be a | coincidence, right?) | post-it wrote: | Do they have a day job? I thought they lived off their | Patreon. They definitely changed their first and last name at | some point, I remember a Twitter thread mentioning it. | frosted-flakes wrote: | Is it multiple people writing the Twitter posts? | shdon wrote: | They're a Continuous Integrator at Backblaze, according to | their LinkedIn. | johnsonap wrote: | they use they, not he, but they have a lot of followers on | ko-fi! https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing | umvi wrote: | Does foone have a job? I know he has a Patreon. | ryan-c wrote: | If you know foone has a Patreon, I'm not sure how you're | aware they're not a "he"... | umvi wrote: | I know they have a Patreon because I saw it on their | wiki[0] which I read through after seeing their death | generator a few months ago. Their wiki didn't mention | their gender identity preferences, and I don't follow | their blog or twitter or anything, so I wasn't aware, | sorry... | | [0] http://floppy.foone.org/w/Main_Page | varjag wrote: | If space aliens ever get this as an artefact they'll never make | sense out of it. | mhb wrote: | Not the same, but this "DIY Hand-cranked Music Box Wooden Box + | Hole Puncher + Paper Tapes" might appeal in a similar way: | https://www.ebay.com/itm/182794446978 | teddyh wrote: | "This is a toy zombie." | | -- https://twitter.com/wangtian/status/1454329529569218566 | memeboop wrote: | I love the irony of the new toy containing an actual music box | inside that isnt used to play the music. | neilv wrote: | Perhaps whatever hapless engineer was tasked with desecrating | the Fisher Price toy that might have nudged their own early | cognitive development... retreated into a dark sense of humor | about it. | pmorici wrote: | The original Fisher-Price "Record Player" is really a kids | version of a Polyphon [0] a type of record like music player that | was popular in the late 1800's to early 1900's. You can see some | playing on YouTube [1] | | I thought it would be interesting to 3D print additional records | for the thing. Was super disappointed when I bought one for our | daughter last year and found that they had changed it to a | digital music player that only uses the records for song | selection. | | A lot of the modern day versions of the original Fisher-Price | toys don't hold up to the originals. For example on the xylophone | they replaced the Wood base with plastic and the thing sounds | like crap. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphon | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4zjQshq14 | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soQLAvqnTOQ | agumonkey wrote: | These large polyphons sounds superbly full to me. full metal | not so compact disc :) | | I mean really.. ave maria is a little magical | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu4FWixsUM8 | | gosh | bluGill wrote: | If you want music toys for kids look to hohner | http://hohnerkids.com/. They make a line that are real musical | instruments. They tune their xylophone for example. | | They are still cheap plastic, but the quality is good enough | for real music. | bink wrote: | It sucks how cheaply kid's toys are made these days, but there | are companies that stand out by making things that last. When | my kid was little we bought a lot of Melissa & Doug toys | because they were actually made of wood and would survive | multiple children. | Waterluvian wrote: | Mechanical toys can be "screwed with" a lot. Like experimenting | with a ton of "what if..." | | Electronic toys generally don't give you much of this. | | And I think this really represents a fundamental change in a lot | of aspects of life: there's a specific way to interact with | things, prescribed by the maker. | | I absolutely loved the quiet weekends as a kid where I could | spend hours and hours making ridiculous contraptions by mixing | toys and a bit of tape and such. | kcplate wrote: | Someone out there thinks this is better. | diogenescynic wrote: | Probably just cheaper. | ginko wrote: | I wonder if this was originally planned to be more like the | original with songs mechanically encoded in the disks but | they either found the cheap microswitches in the tone arm to | not have the right reaction speed or they realized developing | the sound generation for the IC took too long/needed a more | powerful+expensive micro controller so they went with this | instead. | Someone1234 wrote: | More reliable too. The old music player was far more | resilient compared to a non-toy, but still suffered from | gunk/grime on both the records and pin. | sulam wrote: | Right, a fully mechanical version would have far higher | DPPM, and as a result likely not be profitable. | rrss wrote: | I don't understand how it could be made profitably 50 | years ago but not today. | zokier wrote: | It's not a question of being profitable or not | profitable, but of being profitable or _more_ profitable. | Also the market situation probably is very different, | nowdays there is most likely more demand for cheaper toys | and more competitive pressure to keep prices down. | Yuioup wrote: | That's just sickening. I'm disgusted to my core. | ineedasername wrote: | It's not that I'm nostalgic for analog, I just don't like the new | version because it's basically a fraud. Presenting itself as | analog when really it's just a skeuomorphic presentation of a | cheap digital music player. | allenrb wrote: | Man, this makes my day. I was born during the original production | run and, of course, had one of these. Lovely, fun little toy. So | when our first child was born and some kind family member bought | her one, it put a big smile on my face... | | ...until I looked closer! Fraud! Deception! And saddest of all, I | tried the same thing foone did, knowing that the unused binary | codes (maybe not 0000 but _surely_ the other five) were surely | hiding a few extra songs. But no, complete and total | disappointment. Par for the course. | | This thing has survived two young daughters now, but it is | utterly devoid of soul. | t0mas88 wrote: | They probably skip 0000, 1111 and all single bit ones because | those are the most likely codes you get if you press the | buttons with a finger? | gjsman-1000 wrote: | My family has had one of these for a few years. I remember | studying it and immediately realizing there was no way the discs | had any data, and sure enough I felt the pins under the head and | could make it play different songs by pushing them in | differently. | | As for the dial, I remember thinking it felt so music-box-like, | but I had no idea it was an actual music box!! | | Alas, I never experienced the mechanical version. Such a shame. | bombcar wrote: | Which is amusing because the music box is silenced and only | sued for regulating the spin. | | I wonder if the original revamp had planned to have it just be | a wind up music box and only play one song. | Jtsummers wrote: | My guess is that the toy in the Twitter thread was the result | of a kind of refactor. If you find a recording of the | original it has a traditional music box inside which actually | plays the songs (you can hear the tinny sound of the metal | tines). So they probably took the original, figured out how | it worked, replaced the audio generation with speakers and | the microcontroller and changed the read head. Since the | newer ones apparently use a switch and no spring, that was an | intermediate step to the current incarnation. | | The first version was an electronic imitation (complete with | winding) of the original. Once the winding was rendered | unnecessary, you get the current version without that | imitation and it loses the tactile component. | wolfgang42 wrote: | The original didn't have a music box in the base; there was | a spring motor to turn the record, but the actual music-box | part was in the head (running along the record, which had | detents in the plastic to pull the tines for the | notes)--this is why you could get different songs by | changing the disc. | | This music box in the base of the new model is probably | simply the cheapest way to get a spring motor for the | turntable these days, rather than custom-manufacturing one | that matches the original. | euroderf wrote: | Back in the 60s we had an actual cheap-ass record player for 78s, | and the 78s were thick - very thick - like more than an eighth of | an inch thick. But these kids' "record players" nowadays? Naaah. | A mere shadow. No actual appreciation of retro technology | required - or wanted. | mulmen wrote: | Are you talking about the toy in the thread or actual | turntables? | krallja wrote: | On sight, I recognize Fur Elise on the cylinder. | codesuki wrote: | This seems to be a theme. Toy quality going down. There was a | tape recorder with mic from fisher price. You could use the mic | to record on the tape and keep it around. I thought to buy it for | my kids because I had good memories of it, but guess what. They | replaced the tape with tiny memory that you have to overwrite all | the time. If they at least would have supported some removable | memory. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _They replaced the tape with tiny memory that you have to | overwrite all the time._ | | Until that point I fully expected you to say that they replaced | the tape with _storage on a cloud account_. I bet this will | happen one day. So many toys are already trying to suck on kids | ' data and hook up the parents to cloud services (see e.g. toys | that feature "extra experiences" that you access by pointing | your smartphone camera at them, and looking through the toy | maker's app). | rrss wrote: | in case others are interested, I was curious about the original | and found a good description the mechanism of the original in the | patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3710668A/en. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-30 23:00 UTC)