They figured teens (mostly girls) were stupid enough to buy this because of the gimmick of having a song you could clip to your bag… except a competitor came along for much less (granted for a smaller sample of the song)
@@gmcnewlook I remember the days of girls tricking out their bags with all sorts of dangling trinkets! That's exactly what I was thinking of with this, some school girl with 10 of them in a clump on a bag!
"Time for Ricky Martin to come out of the blister pack, better late than never" - LOL that had me in stitches. wonder how many people will understand this inside joke!
To be fair, it strikes me more as being a dumb novelty aimed at primary school age kids (*) who tend to be more receiptive to "cool" (by eight or nine-year-old standards) but dumb novelties. Then again, I was already spending my hard saved birthday/Christmas/pocket money on tapes as a kid in the mid-80s, and I doubt that I (or rather, my late-90s counterpart) would have been impressed by one crackly song for more than the latest "Now That's What I Call Music" 30-track double cassette! (*) I think the video was being charitable in even including teens within the possible demographic for this thing...!
"I think it's about time for Ricky Martin to come out...of the blister pack! Better late than never." Very cheeky 😂 Also, I appreciate that you're the kind of person to investigate the source of the sheet music used for the package background design and then include it for us so we can go listen. After looking into it myself, it appears the song was written as a tribute to the late Lester Young, who was known for wearing a pork pie hat. Thank you, as always, for the great content!
Indeed. When McDonalds still had Happy Meal toys with batteries in them the bill of materials for those probably wasn't that much cheaper than what lurks inside this thing.
Hah I went to a Ricky Martin concert in the late 90s with my GF - he had a 30 year old Mustang on stage, which is now a 60 year old Mustang if it still exists. Probably it is worth 4x as much now ;)
You could buy the whole CD for 16.99 in 2000. Granted, you still needed a player, but you could buy a low end portable CD player for under 50 bucks. Right around 2000 or 2001, I bought a CD walkman that could play CD, CDRW and MP3 on CDR or CDRW for like 49 Dollars. Virtually all stereos in kid's rooms had a CD player in them.
Definitely can tell who this was aimed at. I did not recognize or know any of the artists except Brittany Spears, Ricky Martin, Backstreet Boys, N-Sync and of course, Elton John. The only "Be Witched' I knew was that TV show. Did not realize there was a musical act. This is someone that is 10 years older than our "VWestlife" host (Class of 88), so I was (and still) into bands/artists like Rush, Styx, Asia, Pink Floyd, Yes, as well as Queensryche, Ronnie James Dio, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judest Priest, etc. But still, at $15 for a single song, when you could just buy the whole CD album for that much. I guess there was "coolness" factor of having the ability to listen your favorite song on your keychain like that, especially at a time before things like MP3 players really became mainstream.
Bewitched (styled _B*Witched_ ) were an Irish girl group very popular in the UK, known for their bubblegum pop and Irish jig routines on tracks like _C'est La Vie_ - not my jam tbh
It's weird to think you and I are only one year removed from having been in the public school system at the same time, despite that I was barely a teenager when I started watching you, and you already seemed to be this wise elder figure :)
10:09 - yes, I do predict that to be more or less the sound that will accompany this nightmarish vision when it haunts me in my dreams tonight. Well-divined.
Oh the 90s. We romanticize about the decade a lot, but this is just a good reminder of how pricey some electronic toys were. That being said, I wish I still had my Nano puppy keychain. $20 back in 1997!
I think you might have an off-by-one error. It's not just 28 days in January. Somebody born Jan 2 1979 would have one teenage day in 1999 before turning 20.
I have to wonder how many people bought this for the novelty of it, and then promptly forgot about it after playing it just once, unless they really liked playing Ricky Martin’s Maria from a keychain! Even for the time, I think the free in-store sample would’ve been enough to persuade me to spend that $15 on something else. Still, this was an interesting look at something I didn’t know existed.
0:43 - I got ya beat, Class of '96. 😁 And I don't remember MCDs either. 0:59 - Oh. My. Gawd. Five's "Slam Dunk (Da Funk)," I had forgotten all about that song! (OK, Mr. Peabody, I set the Wayback Machine to 1998. Let's gooooo!) 2:42 - B⭐witched! C'est la vie! 4:14 - I had the exact same reaction to Ricky Martin coming out that I did when Barry Manilow came out. "Yeah, yeah, we knew that already." 🤣 9:18 - 🎵Shoo-bee-doo-wop and Scooby snacks/Met a fly girl and I can't relax...🎶 Why pay $15 for one low-bitrate song on a keychain player with tiny speaker, when one could spend $18-20 for an _entire album_ on CD that you could play through your Discman, CD Boombox, car CD player, home DVD player, computer CD-ROM drive? Then there's the occasional expense of button-cell batteries, which were harder to find (at your local department store) at the time than regular AA or AAA (which even drug stores and gas stations carried)... OR, $15 for keychain music player with one low-bitrate song, or $9.99 to 10.49 for an _entire album_ on cassette?
I remember McDonald's used to sell cheap music players during the iPod craze. From what I recall, it played a 30-second song sample twice when you insert the card. The electronics is nothing much, same thing you would find in a musical greeting card.
@@JosiahGould There were two types, not sure about the USA, but here in England around 2011/12 there were these small boomboxes with cards you could get with a happy meal with clips of the (at the time) hits. ive got a bunch somewhere. instead of the music being on the card, it simply pushed a button on the boombox which played the clip.
Nice a video about mcd I missed these thanks for bringing me memories Kevin you are probably maybe the only one I watch theirs video from start to end with like 7 others CZcamsrs I had the Elton John versions.
We're of similar ages (my tassel says 2002) and I too was an obsessive reader of the RadioShack catalogue, but not only do I have no memory of this bizarre product, I never encountered HitClips either! The Goodbye Pork Pie Hat detail is fascinating!
The size of the question of "Why?" in my head is only exceeded by the question of how they could possibly license all that music from Sony, of all record companies. Little marketing experiments like this usually start with music from smaller record companies that are easier and cheaper to license from, and then move on to the big ones like Sony and BMG. On the other hand, that might explain why they're fifteen bucks each. By the way, do I see correctly that they're the same thickness as a CD jewel case?
I haven't seen one of these devices before but I do remember Techmoan showing similar things. I for some reason like the sound of Aliasing Distortion, I remember hearing it on the Amiga unless you turned on the filter to stop it.
"Time for Ricky Martin to come out..." Ha! Around the time that song was doing the rounds, i had a rusty old Nova with a tape deck that needed new belts. Everything played on it sounded just like that clip of Ricky at the end of rhe video. Also those B*Witched dolls are terrifying.
I never had one of these but always wanted some. I have tons of hitclips. I briefly heard the audio from one of these devices back in the day. I'm curious if you connected this to a good amplifier if it would sound better. I wish someone would bring these back so I can collect them. Thanks for this video as there isn't many MCD videos on here
Never heard of an MCD before. This was a mini music player keychain that they were trying to compete with Tiger/Hasbro’s “HitClips”. It started around 1999 and discontinued by the early 2000’s. There were many of them in the series features artists like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and more, plus Elton John with his classics. But sadly, MCD doesn’t included a collection of oldies from the 1950’s and 1960’s that includes Elvis Presley, Rolling Stones, Beatles, plus a collection of 1970’s and 1980’s that includes Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Bee Gees, Donna Summer and more.
Is the music from those public domain CDs on the internet anywhere? The music at 8:00 is literally the theme music to Classic Game Room, and I recognize other music from him in your other videos, so I’m pretty sure he used the same CD set. I’ve looked for it on CZcams before though and couldn’t find it.
Ok. The sample rate and the length of the song is quite advenced for 1999. Unlike the hitclip which uses a sample rate of 8000 khz, the mcd seams to be using a sample rate of 10000 khz, hints why it has less aliasing. It might be bad for listening to music but I've never seen a toy with that much data in 1999. Really good video as always. I love your content.
@@Misguided_Robot273 Hello there! Is it the man with many hair, 2 eyes, and a nose. You just caught me while I was in nerd mode! How is your Z80 running at 4.3362 megahertz with an 8 bit data sheet going lol?
@@vwestlife Oh that makes more sens. That's even more impressive then I was thinking. I would love to know how much data can be stored on that chip. I'm also curious to know if the audio is pwm. By the way, I said 10khz because the aliasing when slowed down sounded like 5khz to me. I need more practice on my sampling rate identification skills ha ha. I really enjoy when you show audio tech like this. Keep up the good work and have a great day.
This makes Hitclips look like iPods! Because MCD selling a single song for the same price as a full album is why it failed! Hitclips were at least smaller and cheaper, and lot of kids in my middle and high school used them at lunchtime!
A new video from VW is definity a better day. Great one as well as i love old formats and never seem to tire of it. Seemed way over priced, but for a Ricky Martin fan it probably would have men't the world perhaps 🤔
I don't remember those at all. I do remember the Hit Clips vaguely, but the Pocket Rockers are the ones I member as a kid. Everyone wanted those little tape cartridges.
I had a few of these in the early 2000's. (C'est La Vie by B Witched, Rollercoaster by B Witched, and Everybody Get Up by Five) Never thought I'd see one of them again! They were cool to have as a kid, but definitely not worth $15 even back then.
I keep seeing little gadgets on your channel (and others) that I don't realize I need until.. anyway, I'm going to need to get my hands on one of those pickup coils. Reasons.
I remember that era like it was yesterday, there was Livin La Vida Loca, Mambo No. 5, bands like Cherry Poppin Daddies, Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It was the last gasp of the music video being played on MTV.
Looks like the superior digital compression to fit an entire song was just not enough to make it successful. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to market/sell especially with competitors like hit clips. Even if you bought it, it’s not like you can plug in headphones or something, it’s only through the internal speaker. You could probably buy a real mini CD for a fraction of the price if you only wanted that specific song, plus you can play it anywhere.
god i remember these, i was seven when they came out. they were sold in toy aisles in new zealand and i never saw them in the wild outside of stores so i assume nobody actually bought them here either
Of course FAO Schwarz jacked up the price, I'm actually a little shocked they sold these at all given my childhood memories of it as the snobbiest chain toy store of all time. (I specifically remember asking for Smurfs at the Tyson's Corner location in northern Virginia and being told they didn't carry them because they were "too common".)
With all the talk about the revival of physical media, something like this has more chance to succeed than, say, compact cassettes, as there is no good tape being manufactured, no good playback machines, no Dolby NR. But these trinkets can now hold a whole album and have a headphone output or maybe a Bluetooth transmitter. People buy merch like cassettes as memorabilia anyway, but these at least would be usable and would not have clicks or pops or wobble. Just make sure the battery is replaceable.
Surprisingly OK speaker in there - thought it would be a piezo job, still sounds terrible though. Glad to hear Ricky Martin has come out........of his packaging, be proud Ricky, be proud. If only Elton John had a Pinball Wizard themed doll - take my money!
8:00. Hey it’s the CGR song. Reminds me of better days before that channel went to shit. You know one time, they did open auditions for CGR Toys. I made a video, took me about 3 hours, made sure to have good lighting and try and capture the theme of the channel well. Turns out they liked it enough to invite me to submit videos for the channel. They offered, get this, $15 per video. And that’s with me doing all my own shooting, editing, and toy gathering. An offer which I considered a total lowball by a factor of 3. definitely not worth my time or effort, but I tried to graciously say Thanks but no thanks…
Personally your content is a little too boomer for me but I stay subscribed for these videos of obscure audio wankery, I love this kinda stuff so it's worth staying subbed for me
Proof that "boomer" doesn't mean anything more than "old by Gen-Z standards" any more(!) FFS, I'm late Gen-X and this is still fifteen years too recent to have been around when *I* was a kid, let alone an actual baby boomer! 😮 (The youngest boomers might just about have had *kids* young enough to have played with this). On the other hand, it still looks like an incredibly dated product from another era by today's standards, regardless of how mindbogglingly cool *any* electronic device like this would have seemed if it had slipped through a timewarp back to the mid-80s. Yeah, I know, get off my lawn, etc. etc.
Cost the same as a CD album, sounded worse than a CD album, but "all the kids gotta have it cos it's the best thing in personal music entertainment!!!" if TV ads are to be believed (they aren't!)... :P
Ok I dont know if you timed this on purpose or if its just happenstance but @4:20 i about spat out my drink! I see what ya did there sir! great reference (that none of your younger viewers will get) OK glitch in the matrix time, I just posted that comment and its 4:20 PM... i dunno how all of this happened...
The price is the first red flag for me - selling it at $15 is practically what the cost would have been to simply buy the new CD
That's crazy! $15 to get a horribly sounding copy of a song.
They figured teens (mostly girls) were stupid enough to buy this because of the gimmick of having a song you could clip to your bag… except a competitor came along for much less (granted for a smaller sample of the song)
Sounds like a scam, smells like a scam.
It would be a good price if it had the full album and you could plug in headphones.
@@gmcnewlook I remember the days of girls tricking out their bags with all sorts of dangling trinkets!
That's exactly what I was thinking of with this, some school girl with 10 of them in a clump on a bag!
"Time for Ricky Martin to come out of the blister pack, better late than never" - LOL that had me in stitches. wonder how many people will understand this inside joke!
The pause in the middle of the sentence, pure gold, A+ comedy :)
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I lost it there also !
Well knowing this channel I knew he'd likely go there at some point.
could you explain?
@@wileyfoxyx I think the joke is referencing that Ricky Martin is gay and came out years after his success.
"Flippin' Eck" - Techmoan.
I knew I had heard that voice before.
That episode is very quotable for me. I also love Techmoan's "I don't know what bit rate they used, but it's between zero and not enough."
Ricky Martin's Maria is timeless, it will never cease to be annoying. And the lower quality of sound does not affect the essence of the song.
Whippa!
Well, it's less annoying then Despacito. ^^
It has at least some energy.
It doesn't surprise me that these failed of course. I'm just amazed that they got to market and no one questioned how dumb of an idea it was.
To be fair, it strikes me more as being a dumb novelty aimed at primary school age kids (*) who tend to be more receiptive to "cool" (by eight or nine-year-old standards) but dumb novelties.
Then again, I was already spending my hard saved birthday/Christmas/pocket money on tapes as a kid in the mid-80s, and I doubt that I (or rather, my late-90s counterpart) would have been impressed by one crackly song for more than the latest "Now That's What I Call Music" 30-track double cassette!
(*) I think the video was being charitable in even including teens within the possible demographic for this thing...!
Teens are the ONLY demographic that would buy this. But they're also the demographic with no appreciable disposable income. So....
When you show the price, first thing I thought of: "For $16.99, it'd be cheaper to just head over to Wal-Mart and buy the full CD!"
Eventually MCDs sold at Toys 'R' Us for $1.98, probably the final clearance price.
For real I put it into a inflation calculator, 30 bucks! no wonder no one bought them!
Nono, don't buy CDs at Wal-Mart. They're all censored. ;-)
All I can think of is "Bigger. Longer. Uncut."
All I can think of is "Bigger, Longer, Thicker, Deeper".
Blame Canada!
A new VWestlife video is a perfect start to my Monday
"I think it's about time for Ricky Martin to come out...of the blister pack! Better late than never." Very cheeky 😂 Also, I appreciate that you're the kind of person to investigate the source of the sheet music used for the package background design and then include it for us so we can go listen. After looking into it myself, it appears the song was written as a tribute to the late Lester Young, who was known for wearing a pork pie hat. Thank you, as always, for the great content!
Thanks for helping Mr. Martin come out
…at last
When I saw MCD on the title I thought it was a happy meal promotion.
Funny you asked that, as McDonald's did used to bundle discs with their toys at one point.
@@sylverrezI know one being the McDonalds music player with artists such as Black Eyed Peas, and Jason Derulo.
Remember McDonalds used to give Kids Bop CDs in Happy Meals...god were they awful sounding
@@teh_supar_hackr that was also one of them yeah.
I love it when your channel suddenly becomes Techmoan for a few seconds before reverting, and for a moment I second-guess reality itself.
There's almost a whole dollar's worth of electronics in there!
Indeed. When McDonalds still had Happy Meal toys with batteries in them the bill of materials for those probably wasn't that much cheaper than what lurks inside this thing.
Hah I went to a Ricky Martin concert in the late 90s with my GF - he had a 30 year old Mustang on stage, which is now a 60 year old Mustang if it still exists.
Probably it is worth 4x as much now ;)
That ending was cursed
Those speaker grilles make Ricky, Britney et al look like they've been shot at and filled with bullet holes.
You could buy the whole CD for 16.99 in 2000. Granted, you still needed a player, but you could buy a low end portable CD player for under 50 bucks. Right around 2000 or 2001, I bought a CD walkman that could play CD, CDRW and MP3 on CDR or CDRW for like 49 Dollars. Virtually all stereos in kid's rooms had a CD player in them.
$25.00 if it was a Coby player, they only lasted a few months lol
For the cover, they grabbed sheet music which no longer needed licensing, probably.
I'm loving the Techmoan clips lately.
It's only bigger & longer when it's decompressed below atmospheric pressure.
That’s what she said! 😆
I'm liking the uptick in understated comedy on the channel lately.
Definitely can tell who this was aimed at. I did not recognize or know any of the artists except Brittany Spears, Ricky Martin, Backstreet Boys, N-Sync and of course, Elton John. The only "Be Witched' I knew was that TV show. Did not realize there was a musical act. This is someone that is 10 years older than our "VWestlife" host (Class of 88), so I was (and still) into bands/artists like Rush, Styx, Asia, Pink Floyd, Yes, as well as Queensryche, Ronnie James Dio, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judest Priest, etc. But still, at $15 for a single song, when you could just buy the whole CD album for that much. I guess there was "coolness" factor of having the ability to listen your favorite song on your keychain like that, especially at a time before things like MP3 players really became mainstream.
Bewitched (styled _B*Witched_ ) were an Irish girl group very popular in the UK, known for their bubblegum pop and Irish jig routines on tracks like _C'est La Vie_ - not my jam tbh
@@JonnyInfinite And also a Swedish Black/Thrash metal band which confused a lot of people back in those days.
"Revolutionary audio compression" which probably just means ADPCM instead of PCM lol
7:59 WOAH! That's a Classic Game Room jumpscare if I've ever seen one!
CGR was that channel back in the day
Any toy that I had that used watch batteries was basically disposable. I had enough trouble getting my hands on regular batteries back then.
Nice attention to detail regarding the sheet music background picture. Also, was not expecting Creepy Elton John.
Nobody expects Creepy Elton John
I love your relationship with techmoan Mat, he's mentioned you in the past and now I want to see a collab.
@3:57 - Goodbye Porkpie Hat was the first tune I ever heard Jeff Beck rip out. I was a fan from that point on.
It's weird to think you and I are only one year removed from having been in the public school system at the same time, despite that I was barely a teenager when I started watching you, and you already seemed to be this wise elder figure :)
Wow, I never knew VWestlife was also such a Ricky Martin fan. You learn something everyday!
10:09 - yes, I do predict that to be more or less the sound that will accompany this nightmarish vision when it haunts me in my dreams tonight. Well-divined.
Oh the 90s. We romanticize about the decade a lot, but this is just a good reminder of how pricey some electronic toys were.
That being said, I wish I still had my Nano puppy keychain. $20 back in 1997!
After seeing the thumbnail I was hoping that Ricky Martin had released his own proprietary music format...MartinClipDiscs or something
"older than Nick Carter and can still claim to be a teenager in 1999" is a surprisingly tight window!
I think you might have an off-by-one error. It's not just 28 days in January. Somebody born Jan 2 1979 would have one teenage day in 1999 before turning 20.
3:43 I’m not sure Elton would’ve approved these 🤣🤣🤣
You got me baffled for a second until you included the 'except Nick Carter' bit......
I have to wonder how many people bought this for the novelty of it, and then promptly forgot about it after playing it just once, unless they really liked playing Ricky Martin’s Maria from a keychain! Even for the time, I think the free in-store sample would’ve been enough to persuade me to spend that $15 on something else. Still, this was an interesting look at something I didn’t know existed.
Yes, I actually do remember these! I saw one in a bargain bin decades ago, it's an NSYNC one (of course!). It was a pretty cool novelty.
0:43 - I got ya beat, Class of '96. 😁 And I don't remember MCDs either.
0:59 - Oh. My. Gawd. Five's "Slam Dunk (Da Funk)," I had forgotten all about that song! (OK, Mr. Peabody, I set the Wayback Machine to 1998. Let's gooooo!)
2:42 - B⭐witched! C'est la vie!
4:14 - I had the exact same reaction to Ricky Martin coming out that I did when Barry Manilow came out. "Yeah, yeah, we knew that already." 🤣
9:18 - 🎵Shoo-bee-doo-wop and Scooby snacks/Met a fly girl and I can't relax...🎶
Why pay $15 for one low-bitrate song on a keychain player with tiny speaker, when one could spend $18-20 for an _entire album_ on CD that you could play through your Discman, CD Boombox, car CD player, home DVD player, computer CD-ROM drive? Then there's the occasional expense of button-cell batteries, which were harder to find (at your local department store) at the time than regular AA or AAA (which even drug stores and gas stations carried)... OR, $15 for keychain music player with one low-bitrate song, or $9.99 to 10.49 for an _entire album_ on cassette?
I remember McDonald's used to sell cheap music players during the iPod craze. From what I recall, it played a 30-second song sample twice when you insert the card. The electronics is nothing much, same thing you would find in a musical greeting card.
Those were HitClipz. Still have all the ones from McDonalds somewhere.
@@JosiahGould HitClips was promoted by McDonald's, but they never in their lifetime sold HitClips toys in Happy Meals.
@@JosiahGould There were two types, not sure about the USA, but here in England around 2011/12 there were these small boomboxes with cards you could get with a happy meal with clips of the (at the time) hits. ive got a bunch somewhere. instead of the music being on the card, it simply pushed a button on the boombox which played the clip.
Nice a video about mcd I missed these thanks for bringing me memories Kevin you are probably maybe the only one I watch theirs video from start to end with like 7 others CZcamsrs I had the Elton John versions.
"So I think it's about time for Ricky Martin to come out... of the blister pack. Better late than never." - That cracked me up.
….why?
Mingus would be fuming if he was around to see this!
More like having a stroke lol
Most professional musicians don't care much about audiophile quality.
6:09 HE BANGS, HE BANGS!
after he came out he should have made that as the answer to she bangs she bangs.
We're of similar ages (my tassel says 2002) and I too was an obsessive reader of the RadioShack catalogue, but not only do I have no memory of this bizarre product, I never encountered HitClips either! The Goodbye Pork Pie Hat detail is fascinating!
TechMoan's cameo make my day 😂😂😂 !!
The size of the question of "Why?" in my head is only exceeded by the question of how they could possibly license all that music from Sony, of all record companies.
Little marketing experiments like this usually start with music from smaller record companies that are easier and cheaper to license from, and then move on to the big ones like Sony and BMG. On the other hand, that might explain why they're fifteen bucks each.
By the way, do I see correctly that they're the same thickness as a CD jewel case?
Yes, it's the same thickness as a regular CD.
I haven't seen one of these devices before but I do remember Techmoan showing similar things. I for some reason like the sound of Aliasing Distortion, I remember hearing it on the Amiga unless you turned on the filter to stop it.
"Time for Ricky Martin to come out..." Ha!
Around the time that song was doing the rounds, i had a rusty old Nova with a tape deck that needed new belts. Everything played on it sounded just like that clip of Ricky at the end of rhe video.
Also those B*Witched dolls are terrifying.
Great video. I always enjoy your channel. Thank You.
I never had one of these but always wanted some. I have tons of hitclips. I briefly heard the audio from one of these devices back in the day. I'm curious if you connected this to a good amplifier if it would sound better. I wish someone would bring these back so I can collect them. Thanks for this video as there isn't many MCD videos on here
Collect them all. They were lucky if someone collected more than one at that price point.
To be fair I's love to have these for like 5$ each as a keychain or zipper dongle.
Never heard of an MCD before. This was a mini music player keychain that they were trying to compete with Tiger/Hasbro’s “HitClips”. It started around 1999 and discontinued by the early 2000’s. There were many of them in the series features artists like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and more, plus Elton John with his classics. But sadly, MCD doesn’t included a collection of oldies from the 1950’s and 1960’s that includes Elvis Presley, Rolling Stones, Beatles, plus a collection of 1970’s and 1980’s that includes Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Bee Gees, Donna Summer and more.
Is the music from those public domain CDs on the internet anywhere? The music at 8:00 is literally the theme music to Classic Game Room, and I recognize other music from him in your other videos, so I’m pretty sure he used the same CD set. I’ve looked for it on CZcams before though and couldn’t find it.
It's "No Problem", sourced from the same BackTraxx Music Library as the ones he used on his Classic Game Room series.
@@northernplacecorporation I remember that tune from Classic Game Room. Shame he doesn't make videos anymore.
@@sylverrez Yeah... it's a massive shame Mark doesn't make anything CGR-related.
@@sylverrez he started up again. Just this year.
@heindijs Maybe.
4:16 It's so amusing that that split-second pause is hilarious, but only if you get the reference. 😂
Is old enough to remember those MCD's...
When Tiger Electronics somehow improves upon your product idea, you know it's time to pack it in.
Ok. The sample rate and the length of the song is quite advenced for 1999. Unlike the hitclip which uses a sample rate of 8000 khz, the mcd seams to be using a sample rate of 10000 khz, hints why it has less aliasing. It might be bad for listening to music but I've never seen a toy with that much data in 1999. Really good video as always. I love your content.
Well hello
@@Misguided_Robot273 Hello there! Is it the man with many hair, 2 eyes, and a nose. You just caught me while I was in nerd mode! How is your Z80 running at 4.3362 megahertz with an 8 bit data sheet going lol?
Actually it uses a sampling rate of 11.025 kHz.
@@vwestlife Oh that makes more sens. That's even more impressive then I was thinking. I would love to know how much data can be stored on that chip. I'm also curious to know if the audio is pwm. By the way, I said 10khz because the aliasing when slowed down sounded like 5khz to me. I need more practice on my sampling rate identification skills ha ha. I really enjoy when you show audio tech like this. Keep up the good work and have a great day.
That's some high quality sound!!😂😂😂
This makes Hitclips look like iPods! Because MCD selling a single song for the same price as a full album is why it failed! Hitclips were at least smaller and cheaper, and lot of kids in my middle and high school used them at lunchtime!
that sound at 5:45 made me think my playstation was going nuts
Very interesting show - thank you!
A new video from VW is definity a better day. Great one as well as i love old formats and never seem to tire of it.
Seemed way over priced, but for a Ricky Martin fan it probably would have men't the world perhaps 🤔
Interesting - they recorded the bass part of the song although the Speaker is not able to reproduce.
"Goodbye Porkpie Hat" is a pretty good tune. I'm particularly fond of Jeff Beck's version.
5:46 Top of the hour?
I really want to know who wanted to make knockoff MCDs.
I don't remember those at all. I do remember the Hit Clips vaguely, but the Pocket Rockers are the ones I member as a kid. Everyone wanted those little tape cartridges.
I had a few of these in the early 2000's. (C'est La Vie by B Witched, Rollercoaster by B Witched, and Everybody Get Up by Five) Never thought I'd see one of them again! They were cool to have as a kid, but definitely not worth $15 even back then.
I keep seeing little gadgets on your channel (and others) that I don't realize I need until..
anyway, I'm going to need to get my hands on one of those pickup coils. Reasons.
this is a good example of toys being mostly developed to drive parents insane :) ... HUEPA
I remember that era like it was yesterday, there was Livin La Vida Loca, Mambo No. 5, bands like Cherry Poppin Daddies, Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It was the last gasp of the music video being played on MTV.
Looks like the superior digital compression to fit an entire song was just not enough to make it successful. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to market/sell especially with competitors like hit clips. Even if you bought it, it’s not like you can plug in headphones or something, it’s only through the internal speaker. You could probably buy a real mini CD for a fraction of the price if you only wanted that specific song, plus you can play it anywhere.
god i remember these, i was seven when they came out. they were sold in toy aisles in new zealand and i never saw them in the wild outside of stores so i assume nobody actually bought them here either
It took me 6:48 minutes to realize / remember that Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias are two different people
Of course FAO Schwarz jacked up the price, I'm actually a little shocked they sold these at all given my childhood memories of it as the snobbiest chain toy store of all time. (I specifically remember asking for Smurfs at the Tyson's Corner location in northern Virginia and being told they didn't carry them because they were "too common".)
Man, I haven't heard of FAO Schwarz since I went into one in the 90s to get a signed picture of Randy Savage.
... And somehow they're still around?
Cool. I never heard of either one of those, we're about the same age, (class of 1999) and I was into tech my entire life.
With all the talk about the revival of physical media, something like this has more chance to succeed than, say, compact cassettes, as there is no good tape being manufactured, no good playback machines, no Dolby NR. But these trinkets can now hold a whole album and have a headphone output or maybe a Bluetooth transmitter. People buy merch like cassettes as memorabilia anyway, but these at least would be usable and would not have clicks or pops or wobble. Just make sure the battery is replaceable.
Surprisingly OK speaker in there - thought it would be a piezo job, still sounds terrible though. Glad to hear Ricky Martin has come out........of his packaging, be proud Ricky, be proud. If only Elton John had a Pinball Wizard themed doll - take my money!
please explain, Pinball Wizard is The Who, what is the Sir Elton connection here?
@@Blackadder75 Erm - famously Elton was The Pinball Wizard singer...of the song Pinball Wizard...erm he's a bout 10 feet tall. Erm...yep.
Although i've never heard of these i have a 3' cd single from Japan on Connie Francis FOLLOW THE BOYS/FOLLOW THE BOYS[Japanese version]
8:00. Hey it’s the CGR song. Reminds me of better days before that channel went to shit. You know one time, they did open auditions for CGR Toys. I made a video, took me about 3 hours, made sure to have good lighting and try and capture the theme of the channel well. Turns out they liked it enough to invite me to submit videos for the channel. They offered, get this, $15 per video. And that’s with me doing all my own shooting, editing, and toy gathering. An offer which I considered a total lowball by a factor of 3. definitely not worth my time or effort, but I tried to graciously say Thanks but no thanks…
I love this channel.
Personally your content is a little too boomer for me but I stay subscribed for these videos of obscure audio wankery, I love this kinda stuff so it's worth staying subbed for me
Proof that "boomer" doesn't mean anything more than "old by Gen-Z standards" any more(!)
FFS, I'm late Gen-X and this is still fifteen years too recent to have been around when *I* was a kid, let alone an actual baby boomer! 😮 (The youngest boomers might just about have had *kids* young enough to have played with this).
On the other hand, it still looks like an incredibly dated product from another era by today's standards, regardless of how mindbogglingly cool *any* electronic device like this would have seemed if it had slipped through a timewarp back to the mid-80s.
Yeah, I know, get off my lawn, etc. etc.
4:14 Time for Ricky to come out... I'll admit that made me chuckle.
Three Watch Batteries to play One Song?
I think this type of thing must be what one of my schoolmates had when I was in like 5th grade. (it played some Britney Spears song)
10:01 That was unexpected. Creepy Elton John doll doesn't exist, he can't hurt you. Creepy Elton John doll:
God, the Elton John clip at the end really is creepy...lol
The sampling rate is actually higher on the mcd than the hit clips.
No one’s gonna cut your own tape!
@@Misguided_Robot273No no no no no noooo.
10:05 Elton John sure seems happy there!
I've had musical greetings cards that sounded better. I was honestly expecting to see a Piezo sounder inside.
Huh. I was a teen in that era, and I don't remember these things at all. Pretty obscure!
Yaboom... I think the best company name ever :D
The bankruptcy headline writes itself: "Yaboom went bust"
@@vwestlife hahahaha :D
7:56 Classic Game Room?!!
Edit: It’s called Black And Blue by Alex Torres
With this format failing, I guess the Elton doll could sing _Goodbye 20 Second Play Mode.._
Cost the same as a CD album, sounded worse than a CD album, but "all the kids gotta have it cos it's the best thing in personal music entertainment!!!" if TV ads are to be believed (they aren't!)... :P
kinda looks like it has an external RC cct for the clock, might be fun to mess with
Ricky Martin, but bigger and longer (and probably uncut). 😉😂
What???
@@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072 You heard me lol.
I was in my 30s about that time and don't remember them either. Do you know if they were available in the UK? Anyway, thanks for another fun post.
Ok I dont know if you timed this on purpose or if its just happenstance but @4:20 i about spat out my drink! I see what ya did there sir! great reference (that none of your younger viewers will get) OK glitch in the matrix time, I just posted that comment and its 4:20 PM... i dunno how all of this happened...