Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
If someone is going to develop creativity and tech skills using a smartphone it'll be despite their device not because of it. 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. And complexity and fragility is the enemy of self driving cars, and if you build systems that handle it inadequately, people die.This modern version is a complete scam, especially since the outside look seems absolutely identical to the original. Fine condition approximately 9 12 inch by 3 12 inch by 9 1/2 inch television which plays two tunes (London Bridge and Row, Row, Row Your Boat) in conjunction with two different picture stories that scroll across the 7 inch diagonal television screen. The music box was only missing the comb (the part that makes the sounds when the tines are plucked). 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. 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.
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. Once the winding was rendered unnecessary, you get the current version without that imitation and it loses the tactile component.
It's arguably the most grab-able music format (cassette tapes are a close contender) and it's a very visual and tactile way to experience music. It’s shaped like the classic toy they’re passing it off as, but it has none of the charm or educational value of the original (well, ok, the physical appearance of the player is still kind of charming). 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. JWZ feels the same way, which is why JWZ looks at the HTTP referrer for all links that were posted on HN and redirects those links to an image of a testicle. I aim to fix that by publishing each repair I carry out in the hope that others will be inspired to repair their things and keep them for longer.
You don't really need the disc at alls - just wind it up (so the chip knows the music is "on"), and press the buttons under the head with your fingers to activate different songs. As for the dial, I remember thinking it felt so music-box-like, but I had no idea it was an actual music box!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. 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.
What sets it apart from a real computer is the fact it only does what manufacturer designed it to do. The design, which has been around since the 1970s, includes five double-sided records for kids to play on the wind-up turntable. So many toys are already trying to suck on kids' data and hook up the parents to cloud services (see e. 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.
Songs Include: Jack and Jill; Humpty Dumpty; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Au Clair De La Lune; London Bridge; Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone; Children's Marching Song; Camptown Races; Hickory, Dickory, Dock; The Farmer in the Dell. I'm not sure how common this is in other countries, but here in Germany we have quite a few "water playgrounds".
Great Deal 
New Comment