[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.
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