I did wonder "what the hell's that" when I saw the 8 track. At first I thought it was a cartridge for an old atari system. But then again, I'm in my 30s and I've never seen one in real life.
Ratz: You just missed it, then (the era of the 8-track, I mean). I'm just a few years older than you (I'm still in my 30s, but barely), and I had an 8-track player, briefly, back in the day... kind of.
It was a toy "robot", called 2XL, -- essentially a robot-shaped 8-track player. You could buy special tapes for it that had little quizzes and puzzles on them, read aloud in a sassy-robot voice. They were multiple-choice, and you "answered" them by pressing one of 4 numbered buttons. The only real function of the buttons was to switch tracks on the tape. (So, for example, at 8:00 on each of the four tracks there would be a different question, but in all cases the correct answer would be "Button #3." At 8:10 on Track 3, it would say "You're right!" and on every other track it would say, "Sorry; the correct answer was Button #3" and so on). One of the problems of this design was that you actually had to try every wrong answer to each question if you ever wanted to hear all of the other questions.
It was a pretty thin gimmick, even for a couple of dorky kids, but we did buy a few second-hand music tapes to play in it before we graduated to cassettes. I get flashbacks to it whenever I hear "Benny and the Jets," "Crocodile Rock," or "Saturday Night's All Right."
Nothing beats the tactile thrill you'd get when making angry phone calls on a rotary dial phone. "SNAP! click-click-click-click-click SNAP! click-click-click SNAP!" etc.
As for music, it's interesting to see how many bands have been still putting out music through all the changes in media: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3... What's next?
7 comments:
Excellent video... but now I feel old! :-(
Heh heh!
I still use an old rotary dial phone.
It's not much use when you have to press 1 etc., mind.
I did wonder "what the hell's that" when I saw the 8 track. At first I thought it was a cartridge for an old atari system. But then again, I'm in my 30s and I've never seen one in real life.
Ratz: You just missed it, then (the era of the 8-track, I mean). I'm just a few years older than you (I'm still in my 30s, but barely), and I had an 8-track player, briefly, back in the day... kind of.
It was a toy "robot", called 2XL, -- essentially a robot-shaped 8-track player. You could buy special tapes for it that had little quizzes and puzzles on them, read aloud in a sassy-robot voice. They were multiple-choice, and you "answered" them by pressing one of 4 numbered buttons. The only real function of the buttons was to switch tracks on the tape. (So, for example, at 8:00 on each of the four tracks there would be a different question, but in all cases the correct answer would be "Button #3." At 8:10 on Track 3, it would say "You're right!" and on every other track it would say, "Sorry; the correct answer was Button #3" and so on). One of the problems of this design was that you actually had to try every wrong answer to each question if you ever wanted to hear all of the other questions.
It was a pretty thin gimmick, even for a couple of dorky kids, but we did buy a few second-hand music tapes to play in it before we graduated to cassettes. I get flashbacks to it whenever I hear "Benny and the Jets," "Crocodile Rock," or "Saturday Night's All Right."
Nothing beats the tactile thrill you'd get when making angry phone calls on a rotary dial phone.
"SNAP! click-click-click-click-click SNAP! click-click-click SNAP!" etc.
As for music, it's interesting to see how many bands have been still putting out music through all the changes in media: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3... What's next?
Cath: That's a pretty neat bit of design!
Remember when you missed the last number.. it was back to the beginning.... grrrr.
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