Girl Tech (and gadgets for kids in general) was awesome!

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Man... I have a deep, deep love for technology that materializes at just the right time to stay afloat, makes its mark, and then is unceremoniously replaced by the next logical evolution of the gap it was trying to fill. It's like watching unnatural selection shoved into colorful, eye-catching plastic shells.

There was something really awesome about putting fringe technology in the hands of literal children to maybe ease them along until they were old enough to own the real thing (or just handing them wildly imaginative, fun junk to entertain themselves with while the sorcery of circuitry gave them an extra for their buck, turning things like plain journals into spy hardware and so on).

I kind of really lament that stuff like this belongs so unequivocally to the age it was released in because it was just fun to mess with by the looks of it (hell, even hearing about it is kind of a treat!).

Did you have any favorite tech toy?

 

[Clippy]

We only had knock-offs here of course.

And finally, the thing that was prevalent throughout the entire Eastern Bloc way back when I imagine.

Basically the USSR-made clone of Game&Watch. I'm not Russian myself and I can barely read Cyrillic but I can tell you that the Nu, Pogodi! you can see at the top was an old cartoon, Basically a Tom and Jerry rip-off. I found one in my dad's 'random crap drawer' a long time ago. Played with it maybe 30 minutes total when I was a kid. Even back then it wasn't particularly engaging but you have to take into account that Gameboys and Game Gears weren't really a thing in my neck of the woods, even after the Iron Curtain fell.

The funniest thing about these things is that I've had the pleasure of taking a few of them apart just for fun (they were broken beyond repair) and the one thing that was common among them is that instead of covering the main chip with a blob they simply sanded off the model numbers in an attempt to hide the fact that it was stolen Western/Japanese tech, even if it was ancient by that point.

Apparently these things are collectible now. Such is the way of all tech I suppose.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

The funniest thing about these things is that I've had the pleasure of taking a few of them apart just for fun (they were broken beyond repair) and the one thing that was common among them is that instead of covering the main chip with a blob they simply sanded off the model numbers in an attempt to hide the fact that it was stolen Western/Japanese tech, even if it was ancient by that point.

Very interesting! Was there any reason at all for doing that?

 

[Clippy]

Very interesting! Was there any reason at all for doing that?

If I were to wager a guess it would be fear of either a potential crackdown on the already limited exports to the Bloc or increased efforts into dismantling the espionage networks that were stealing the tech.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

There was the Casio Loopy, an obscure Japanese game console that was marketed specifically towards girls. It had a built in sticker printer and 11 games, mostly light-hearted and cutesy.

Casio Loopy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[strawberry29]

girl tech is very cool to me cause i like both colors and how to use the product, i remember watching the documentary from computer clan and i fell in love with it like the ideas were soooo cute!!!

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

Ahhh the old times where tech companies needed to help people to actually use technology and trust it.

I miss those days.

Now people are practically born with an standardize smartphone, and they probably wont release it until their demise.

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