though i do the vast majority of my work these days, i'm still somewhat interested in recording and audio toys: actual kids' toys. they aren't that great in the studio, but in live situations they can be pretty fun to play around with.

while watching my saturday morning cartoons i saw an ad for the tiger play-it-now. tiger has been pretty much the name in children's recording toys, from the "talkboy" used in the movie home alone to the "yak back" series, and i guess this is their newest toy. in a sense it's supposed to be like a kid's mp3 player.

instead of a mic, play-it-now has an 1/8" plug attached: the idea is to plug that into the headphone jack of various gadgets. it has 30 minutes of recording time, headphones with headphone jack, and a few built-in games.

i would have preferred if it had a built-in mic as well, although you could get around that by using a coupler... but if you're going that far, why not just use something like a minidisc recorder?

this seems like a cool enough toy, but what i really want is something more like the yak back line. those were like mini samplers with built in effects: i've played with a "yak backwards" and the reverse feature was what really made that thing rock. the play-it-now seems cool enough, but i already have stuff that will do what it does, do it better, and are not much bigger.

still, with a $30 list price, it could be pretty neat. so i figured i should at least mention it, in case any other audio toy enthusiasts are in need of something new to tinker with.

if only i knew where to find some of the old yak back line. i couldn't even find them on ebay or google... in contrast, it was fairly easy to find talkboys on ebay. am i even spelling "yak back" correctly?