Tedium - Digital Training Wheels 🪀

Today in Tedium: For a moment, consider the evolutionary space between the original Game Boy and the iPad. Both defined the way kids would experience computers in a portable format, but were so defining that they kind of set the template for everyone else. But it was clear that the Game Boy was a mere plateau of technological advancement, which allowed some technological wiggle room. Meanwhile, the iPad was considered such a technological ideal that many companies just copied its basic design, killing off true evolution until, say, the Nintendo Switch. That leaves a gap of about 22 years in which handheld gadgets for kids were really freaking experimental and interesting. And with that in mind, today’s Tedium looks back in time at 10 portable electronic toys—some well-known, some obscure—that highlighted how creative toy-makers were when the canvas was completely open. (And we’re including commercials for each, because, hey, commercials!) Maybe you played with a few of these back in the day. — Ernie @ Tedium

2. VTech PreComputer Line

The era: Late 1980s-1990s

What it brought to the table: An understanding that kids need an on-ramp to tech

As I’ve written in the past, VTech is a fascinatingly bizarre company that, after moving on from its starting point as an Apple II clone-maker, has held strong positions in two extremely niche areas of technology—cordless landline telephones and kid-focused electronics. I’d commit a crime if I did not include them in this list, which is why I’m including them.

The PreComputer line isn’t the company’s best-known contribution to educational computing—that would probably be their oddball NES competitor, the Socrates—but it is probably the most influential one on the history of technology, in part because of how versatile the general concept was. The company developed at least as many incompatible models of the PreComputer as Radio Shack did of the TRS-80.

But the designs were pretty nice, showing a willingness to experiment with the form of the computers. Some were handheld, some were laptop-style, and some, such as the VTech PreComputer Unlimited, were even designed to plug into a TV.

Like many of the devices here, they’re extremely hackable, with some folks using PreComputer bases as starting points for cyberdecks, which, honestly, I’d love to see more of.

4. Barbie Photo Designer

The era: 1998

What it brought to the table: A cheap digital camera at a time digital cameras weren’t usually cheap

Remember when Mattel made Hot Wheels and Barbie computers? Turns out, this was the test market for that general idea. Back in the late 1990s, Mattel invested heavily in building a technology business, with a new division, Mattel Media, coming to life in 1996.

Its first product, the Barbie Photo Designer, was a $70 camera whose superpowers came via a CD-ROM for your computer, packed with creativity tools for modifying and animating your digital pictures.

At the time this device came out, digital cameras cost many hundreds of dollars. So a $70 camera sold to the masses was a big deal, no matter the color—and fittingly, the device sold more than 300,000 units in its first holiday season. (All that said, it lacked a very important feature of most digital cameras: an LCD screen.)

The next year, the company expanded the market by developing the Nick Click, which took the same idea to a slightly more gender-neutral IP.

6. Fisher Price Pixter

The era: Early-mid 2000s

What it brought to the table: PDA-style drawing tools

What if you took the basic idea of the Etch A Sketch Animator and made it work more like a Palm Pilot or Apple Newton? Oh, and you gave it a cartridge slot, like a Game Boy? This led to a fascinating product by Fisher Price, a firm not particularly known for selling electronic consoles.

(This device commonly shows up in Reddit threads of people trying to identify a gadget they once used, but they don’t remember the name of. To help you out: It’s a Pixter.)

The Pixter, a squarish gadget with bold, colorful plastics, was clever for its era—a creativity device that predicted the interest in the iPad just a few years later. The device used an attached stylus and accepted cartridges. And compared to a Game Boy, the screen was huge.

Eventually, it gained a color screen, and the ability to play videos. Fisher Price hasn’t made many straight electronics of this nature in the years since, which is too bad, because this feels like the company’s lane.

In fact, one might argue that the Pixter’s role in the market might have inspired other stylus-based devices focused on the consumer market, such as the Nintendo DS.

8. VideoNow

The era: 2003

What it brought to the table: Access to kid-length shows on the car ride home

Sometimes, when you’re on the go, you need to keep a kid at bay and manage their potential crankiness. In the modern day, tablets have proven a useful solution for this, but in the 2000s, VideoNow, a Tiger Electronics original, essentially found and exploited the gap between full-fledged DVD players and portable video. At the time of the VideoNow’s release, watching video on the go wasn’t common—portable DVD players started to emerge, but they were way too bulky for the use case.

The VideoNow did use discs—albeit slightly smaller models than the standard CDs and DVDs of the era. But the real optimization was the size. The devices were designed to be hand-held, like a smartphone in the modern day. Tiger’s track record was not in high quality but high novelty, and in this particular case, they very much found it.

It would only be a couple years until devices like the Video iPod, and later smartphones and tablets, would make this use case completely obsolete. But for its time, it was a fascinating idea.

(By the way, I feel like we’ll get in trouble if we don’t mention HitClips, so let me mention it: HitClips.)

10. LeapFrog Didj

The era: Late 2000s

What it brought to the table: A Linux-based software stack

LeapFrog is an interesting company to consider in the modern day. Founded by a lawyer who was inspired to start a business after facing challenges teaching his son phonics (not a unique story, it turns out), LeapFrog eventually evolved into something of an educational gaming console company, selling learning tools targeted at audiences that might have previously picked up a Game Boy.

After a series of mergers, LeapFrog eventually gained a heavy hitter as its CEO: Former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, who also had much success at Mattel in the 1980s. Kalinske followed up his successful work building the Genesis brand by helping turn LeapFrog into a game company. (We don’t talk about the 32X. OK, maybe we do.) Strangely enough, it worked—and LeapFrog became the electronic toy company of the aughts.

The Didj wasn’t the company’s first gadget—it previously developed the LeapPad in 1999, then the Macromedia Flash-dependent Leapster in 2003—but it was fascinating because of its technology stack. Released in 2008, just before Android became a mainstream entity, the LeapFrog Didj had a custom Linux build at its center, something that LeapFrog continued with for some of its follow-ups. (It also had Sonic—something that Kalinske perhaps helped with.)

The use of Linux has made it and later Leapfrog generations a popular option for hacking in the modern day. For example, Retroleap, a custom version of Retroarch targeted for Leap devices, available on GitHub. It’s as if they made the Steam Deck 15 years early by accident.

It’s only fitting that VTech now owns LeapFrog.