Talkboy

Video review here! https://youtu.be/i1lxP9g9TX4

When Home Alone came out in 1990, it was one of those surprising hits. John Hughes wrote and produced the film with Chris Columbus under a modest budget of just 18 million dollars and had no idea that it would go to be one of the years biggest films. The film is still listed as the highest grossing live action comedy ever and was by the time its run in the theatres ended, it was third in total world gross, behind E.T and Star Wars, the film was a huge success and has become a staple of Christmas time viewing.


It was unsurprising that a sequel would come, and it too went onto be a classic, even if it followed many similar beats to the original, I still love both of these films, they’re timeless in my opinion. The characters are all great, the heart is still there and I still find it funny after seeing about a hundred times.

 

However, me much like every kid who watched the film back in 92 watched gogged eyed at the fancy, almost sci-fi looking walkman Kevin used throughout the film. What was this thing? It has a microphone built in, that’s fantastic, where can I get one? 

We live in an age where product placement in films is near enough expected, sometimes subtly such as character using the latest phone, to placement that is so abundantly in our faces it’s screams “go by this right now!”…Looking at you Sony… However, in the case of the Talkboy and Home Alone 2, the film needed a walkman recording device for certain jokes and certain plot points, so they created a dummy, a non functional prop. But MAN, did it look cool! A clever marketing strategy had the Talkboy feature prominently in the film to ramp up the interest in it.  Families watching the film in droves left with children questioning “Can I have one mum?” The Talkboy hit stores one week after the films VHS debut and was one of 1992s big Christmas must have toys. 



My brother and I were lucky enough to get one each and here’s mine, it’s seen better days but still works pretty well. You can see I loved this thing, it’s scuffed, it’s grubby, it was used regularly. 

The cassette player came in a Home Alone 2 emblazoned box with a cassette that had music and quotes from the film, a pretty novel idea and a great way to keep the film enduring on after you left the theatre. Remember, these were the days where a film going on to VHS might take 9 months to a year, not the 3 months it takes nowadays to land on blu ray. 



So, for people watching and not knowing, what the heck is it? Well, it’s a cassette player first and foremost, with standard functions there, play, fast forward, rewind, stop and record. You can opt to listen through the built in speaker, which was quite novel for the time or use headphones in the jack, there were no headphones provided however. You can listen to your cassette tapes on here, music, books on tape (yeah, remember them?) it was neat! The design of the unit was to be hand held, your hand would slip around the back with easy access to the buttons along the top and your thumb near the on off switch. Holding this thing now, it feels good, very ergonomic. The grip conveniently acts as a nice stand for the Talkboy too.
 
However, the fun came from the microphone…


 
Putting in a blank cassette, you can extend the telescopic microphone out, I don’t think this ever made a difference to the actual recording, I think it was purely to get the mic away from the whirring of the wheels in the Talkboy though this is very minimal. Extended or contracted, you could record, record stuff of the radio, your friends talking and telling jokes, snoop and record conversations, tell stories. The neat thing with Talkboy is that you can replicate the slowed down tape sequence from the film, The ON/OFF switch has a SLOW function that plays the tape at 75% speed so your voice gets pitched down, this was quite a novelty as a kid “Hey, that’s how I’ll sound as a grown up!” It was amusing to listen to female artists in this mode, suddenly soundly a lot more manly and deep. I also figured holding in fast forward and play at the same time allowed you to speed up your voice, with the Chipmunks being popular at the time, this was very funny as kid. 



Between the movie prop and the commercial unit, there’s a few subtle differences. The prop variant had a much longer microphone and the battery compartment hinged, I always wished that mine did this as there were periods where mine would go missing and turn up, taping batteries down is never fun. The buttons were positioned slightly differently for ease of use and the logo moved to the top left of the cassette door rather than bottom central. These are all minor things and as a replica, it holds up fantastically, you’d only spot these things if you’re looking for them.



Tiger Electronics also released a TalkGirl which was just a pink recolour of the standard Talkboy. 

There were also a few other recording devices that used the TalkBoy name, The Talkboy Tic Talker which was a watch, and the Talkboy FX Plus which was a pen. 

Both of these sucked to be honest, the pen was the size of a rolling pin and sounded terrible, as did the watch and both would eat through batteries.

 

With the advent of smart phones and mp3s, the Talkboy and it’s functions are rendered fairly redundant but I’ve held onto this for pure nostalgia more than anything. It reminds me of six weeks holidays playing out and listening to Smash Hits and Aerosmith, borrowing cassettes of my dad to hear them slowed down, goofing around with my brother and my friends recording things. Like most people these days my music is all MP3, I have a box full of cassettes in the attic and now and again, it’s just fun to pop one in and have this thing playing in the background, for retro 90s kicks. It might be outdated but it’s still one of the coolest looking toys ever in my book. I’m gonna slam some 80s and 90s jams into this.