The astute among you have noticed that the tape is upside down, and I suppose that is in the interest of shorter wires between the playback head and the servos that control Teddy’s eyes and mouth, though it could have been done as an easy way to distinguish Teddy tapes from maxi cassingles. Somehow, this tape sounds even better than the Summertime one that came with Demonic Teddy. Wikipedia will tell you that the term to describe the early 90s Seattle music scene came from a record label executive’s description of one band’s sound, but I honestly believe that it was put into that person’s subconscious by this tape, which makes reference to and samples music made by a class of creatures in the Teddy Ruxpin universe known as Grunges. In the meantime, I decided to get another tape to prove that it’s Teddy’s problem, so I got the best possible Teddy Ruxpin tape available: Grunge Music. All the more reason to perform a vivisection.
But based on the normal-sounding speaking voice when played through a tape deck, it seems that whatever is possessing Teddy is coming from within, and will not be so easily exorcised. Oh! So that’s another kind of freaky, isn’t it? Those 1960s outer space noises are the sound of whatever encoding was used to drive the eye and mouth servos. Since I didn’t have any other Teddy Ruxpin tapes lying around, I decided to see how the tape sounded in a regular cassette deck (a Hello Kitty boombox I bought in 1999, lined out to Audacity): I can see through the little viewing window that there is some kind of scwum on the tape itself, which could be the cause of the Satanic sounds. If you’ll recall, Teddy Ruxpin cassettes are special in that one track contains the audio, and the other holds the encoding for the servo(s) that control his eyes and mouth. If you think you can stand it, there’s another song that starts about two minutes in: Īt this point, it was time for experimentation. Of course, the phone mic makes it sound worse than it really is, so I made a much longer recording by propping Teddy up in front of my desk mic. To my absolute glee, not only did he work as intended, he looked and sounded downright demonic! I grabbed my phone and started recording.Īccording to the way this song’s supposed to sound, several characters are singing it together. On the day Teddy arrived all the way from Hawaii, I ran out and bought a set of C cells so I could check his condition.
#Dead cells outfits plus
Since they were so expensive - about $250 inflation-adjusted for the bear and a single tape / book / outfit, plus another $15 for four D cells - I never did get one in my youth. I wanted one when I was a kid, but was also kind of scared of them. Along with Teddy came special cassette tapes, corresponding story books, and outfits. It’s a talking teddy bear that reads stories aloud, all the while moving his eyes and mouth to the sounds. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Teddy Ruxpin was a revolutionary toy that dropped in 1985.
I had to find out.īut let me back up a bit. Maybe the tape itself messed up, and Teddy is fine. Plus, the description promised a semi-working unit with a distorted voice, and who among us could resist a specimen in such condition? Maybe the tape deck motor is going out, or it just needs a new belt. There were and still are plenty of his brethren both young and old to choose from on the auction sites, and when I saw this particularly carefree barefoot Teddy in his Hawaiian shirt and no pants, I was almost totally disarmed. I conquered my childhood fear of talking bears and brought a vintage Teddy Ruxpin animatronic stuffed bear into my home.
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