JuiceBox - The Most Disgusting Mobile Media Player
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- čas přidán 7. 04. 2022
- Another amusing mobile media player this time from Mattel! It's similar to GBA video in some way but way less convenient and one of the slimiest things I've ever had the displeasure of touching.
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#JuiceBox - Komedie
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"HEY, TURN ON THE JUICE!"
Phelous: "Noooooo."
The final episode of Bootleg Zones will have Phelous checking out a Chinese knockoff Juice Box. As soon as you open it the whole thing disintegrates into an adhesive mist that seals your eyes and lungs shut.
2020: GBA Video
2021: VideoNow
2022: Juice Box
The trifecta of this stupid portable video war is complete!
They were all bad but at least the GBA one didn't force you to buy a secondary device just to use it.
I just recently watched a video about the video now line and yikes it was always bad every single version. The juice box was at least one and done but wow, did it fail at everything right out the gate including needing a separate kit to even be able to do MP3s.
Now only if he could cover mini DVDs then.... Yes, there were actually movies and TV shows officially released on mini DVD.
Oh there’s plenty more sadly…
@@Astolfo2001 saw one for cat woman the terrible otts movie at a store..Can’t say I was impressed. Big reason why I never considered it.
@@Roninkinx
Oh these things were prevalent.
There was roughly about 5 years where they were everywhere.
Most of them were complete garbage and a few of them were actually decent even good but they still were no match for the far better quality of any official products from like apple or any of those. Or even some of the phones at the time.
I remember this thing being advertised ALL the time on Cartoon Network back in the day. There was an ad nearly every single commercial break. And even kid me wasn't sold on everything it claimed to be able to do. The only temptation was that it could play Ed Edd n Eddy episodes, which were impossible for me to watch on demand back in the day, but even that selection was pathetically limited...
I mean we were very close to the new age that was coming with things like smartphones and high quality media players from people like Apple. This thing came just as the market was basically collapsing for the cheap garbage for lack of a better word crappy media players.
Once you could basically take anything (audio or video) and compress it or make it work on a device with a resolution closer to DVD these things were dead in the water.
Even back in the days before streaming the very limited selection of episodes and movies for such devices did not motivate me to even look at the things.
@@shenloken2
Yep, I just could never figure out what people saw these things.
I mean kids are willing to settle for less than great stuff usually but this is awful, and they all were.
I can't believe that someone signed off on making the startup jingle the sound of a person obnoxiously sucking on a straw. Thank goodness the audio quality is the worst thing ever so we can't hear it very well.
And if there's any noise that sounds even better when it's bitcrushed all to hell, it's the sound of someone obnoxiously sucking on a straw. Not like that sounds anything like static or a corrupted sound file.
Ah I thought I was hearing things😅
@@Iamafishproductions it's perfect for shitposting.
The immediate sound of sucking seems like the most appropriate thing for this device. This thing sucked back then and it sucks now but even worse. Made of horrible degraded plastic and capable of both the worst looking and sounding media you could possibly force yourself to look at and listen to.
The packaging should've advertised the stickiness to compensate for all the things they didn't include. "INTERACTIVE COATING!"
That's a strange way to advertise the cheap "luxury" plastic it was made of...
I'm sure it wasn't sticky when it was new. It's 17 or 18-year-old cheap plastic, I guess it's decomposing. Either components within the plastic are slowly reacting with each other, or with the oxygen in the air around it. Put it in a glass container for the next 20 to 40 years and you'll have the bare electronics rotting in a in puddle of carcinogenic soup.
- Edit: Just read a comment that says it was sticky right out of the box back in 2004... Lovely, Mattel! Just swell!
or maybe before it was packaged it was probably either dropped in juice or the juice spilled on it
The plastic is degrading. The oils separating from the coating due to age
@@Zeina107 thank you I was hoping somebody would say this. But to add to that, this is usually caused because of lack of airflow, causing the vapor from the degrading plastic to be trapped and stay on the device. This is why they say open up certain collectibles to air out
This is literally the "Lower than 144p" shitpost memes but was actually sold for a price.
Wow.
It's a deep fried meme, but as a portable video player for kids
This reminds me of that old slogan by Mattel:
"You can tell it's Mattel, it's swell"
And it sticks to your fingers like hell.
And oh god, the smell
And the graphic quality makes me want to yell
On this, I refuse to dwell.
It'll make you wanna jump into a well.
"Barbie, i don't feel well..."
I legit remember having Juice Box. But it was actually my older brothers. He had videos of YuGiOh, This one song called "Get Tangled up in me" and much more
My cousin, Roshan had a Mattel Juice Box when he was a kid. He had one of the YuGiOh carts. I'm guessing he sold it sometime after.
When the product is so disgusting that Phelan's already meta-character breaks.
At least UMDs on PSP looked better than this. Honestly, all these mini-media players are giving me serious 2000s flashbacks. They're just incredibly anachronistic representations of the decade.
UMDs could hold more than a CD with single layer: While sadly not as much as a DVD, with the PSP's hardware it probably could have handled more intense compression techniques. I feel like the Juice Box going up against UMDs should be not unlike ants against *Gods* if you ask me.
@@torondin
Yeah as not very successful as everything that wasn't a Sony owned property was on UMD. (and in general the format was incredibly flawed)
The video quality was so much better than anything outside of an incredibly expensive device at the time or a portable DVD player.
Looking back I cannot understand how kids at the time put up with the horrible compressed uglyness that was these videos and barely better compressed music. It's unfortunately one of those kids will tolerate things that adults never would sort of things I guess.
Now with streaming there’s absolutely no going back to that period in time.
I suppose I don’t miss the early 2000’s as much as I thought I did.
those were awesome honestly psp is underrated.
@@shenloken2
For the most part I'd say that's absolutely true. Except when you're away from either Wi-Fi or a phone signal suddenly that basic technology becomes incredibly important. I know for a fact I have stuff on my phone that I can play I want to have a down time because I know they'll be moments where I'll want to watch something and won't have access otherwise.
"I wonder if there's a better portable multimedia player out there nowadays?" - Me, an idiot watching this video on his phone as we speak.
Same here.
The true progression/evolution of digital media players are smartphones, tablets etc.
We had to crawl before we could walk but wow to think we've come this far in less than two decades is crazy. What people tolerated or I should say kids tolerated back then amazes even me.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I was in HS around this time. No one really wanted portable video that much, it wasn't talked about. We just used a TV. When the iPod Video came out, a few people had that, but the video capability (which was way better than on one of these crappy things) was still little more than a gimmick that impressed for 5 mins and then we moved on.
@@nthgth
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned it wasn't until basically cheap smart phones came along that it became an easy and simple thing to transfer videos to it.
I haven't found anyone else talking about this in the comments, but aparently in 2007, someone hacked into a juicebox and found out that this thing isn't only a videoplayer, but a really really stripped down version of Linux! I forget what OS, but it might've been a custom one...but if you have the know-how, you can just straight up have a tiny computer if the rumors are true.
edit: a tiny computer, yes, but also a really sticky computer.
I’ll make it a tiny computer after I replace the front part removing the “legurious” front part and replacing it with hard plastic
I've had my mom tell me I shouldn't be watching stuff on my phone all the time bc the screen is too small. This thing makes any phone screen look like an 11 inch TV! 😂
The Juicebox is literally just an off brand Gameboy Video, even down to the 16 32 and 64 megabyte encoded files
Explains how 4kids was so involved.
These early 2000s media players takes me back to the time I worked in the "R Zone" section at Toys R Us. I had to stock these bulky device packages on the shelves along the outside of the section.
GOD, I remember the RZone. I remember the ads vaporized a kid's head because the Tiger Electronics wireframe red graphics were just TOO MIND-BLOWING, and I was old enough to laugh. Thankfully my days of being taken in by ads for crappy videogame consoles were long past me by then (my parents never forgave me for letting me talk them into buying a GameGear, assuring them it'd be the last portable I ever needed).
I miss my childhood.
Was it the head-mounted version or the handheld one?
@@magnatcleo2043 Yes.
I remember the Toys r Us "R Zone".
I think the last time I ever saw Toys R Us was right around the same time they started closing their stores.
I went in started looking for anything that was still worth the inflated prices even though everything was supposed to be __% off.
Actually had there R Zone discount card or whatever but I don't think I used it once or maybe once ever in the 10 to 15 years they were doing it.
The fact it was the same name as those terrible tiger electronics toys is always hilarious to me. Almost like a perfect foreshadowing of how poorly it was going to do for Toys R Us.
Imagine if someone makes a Juice Box cartridge that plays this video.
I dread the thought of how much crunchier the recordings of the device running would sound after compressing this video to work on it.
@@magnatcleo2043 that would essentially be live footage of Hell
Every time I hear that little voice say "Juice Box!" my brain tells me, "that's Glados," so maybe the Juice Box was made by Aperture Science, which would explain a lot.
It would also explain why the plastic is sticky. It's the remaining liquids of the employees who died in the robot hands of Glados.
The juicebox is a lie!
The sticky feeling is from the coating on the plastic shell degrading. It was all the rage in the naughties to make things look luxury but unfortunately it's degraded in recent years and can be removed with Goo Gone or Isopropyl Alcohol.
Sad
Anyone else think Phelous is a stoner?
@@smb-c3po
If he is he's found the absolute perfect job.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu It'd make sense, he lives in Canada and everything's an old RPG over there
@@smb-c3po please stop. Get help 😅
There's only one thing I can think of when just looking at this thing...
...Soundwave
That's mean to Soundwave.
@@phelous I know. I'm sorry. I should've known better than to call Soundwave inferior
@@phelous maybe Sound Recorder...Armouraker...the bootleg one
Fake soundwave... inferior
Gotta love that turn of the century ”satin” finish that nearly every early 2000's device had. Especially if they were budget or ”toy” versions of something.
Pulled some of my dad's old digital cameras out of a junk drawer a few years ago and the Polaroid ones in particular had melted to whatever they were near.
Looked like WALL-E forgot to chew.
Yeah that soft touch plastic that was everywhere in the late 90s and early 2000s is complete garbage now.
It turns to sticky goo and best case scenario you can just rub off that thin top layer with a little isopropyl alcohol. Worst case scenario the whole thing was made of that terrible plastic and it's just one giant gloppy mess. Luckily most things from that era aren't worth really revisiting not even to laugh at.
I mean, you could just try to remove the casing and get a 3D printed replacement if you REALLY want to preserve them
Ah 4kids, the universe where onigiri are donuts, you can be held hostage by someone pointing at you, and characters show their maturity by lighting up their lollipop.
That was my childhood and I wouldn't have it any other way 👍🏻
Funny enough, the original Japanese version of Yugioh had Maximillian Pegasus actually be aged at 25 instead of the much older gentleman that we see in the 4kids dub.
This befuddled me so much because from the start I always thought he was older from the get go. And then Bandith Keith himself was also aged way younger than what the dub portrayed.
Which despite all the silliness...that little bit of knowledge let me appreciate a little more the dubbing of 4kids and understand some of their thought process.
DiC and cloverway say hello...
"It is implied I'm being punched."
Actual 4Kids -dialog- decision.
Has 4kids went to the other dimension or are they still doing something? I'm asking as someone not from the USA.
I got one of these things as a Christmas gift back in 2004. My mom got it for me not knowing any better, when she first heard of mp3s.
I'm pretty sure mine was red though. Funny thing is when I opened it, I was also weirded out by the stickiness. I never even used it. I opened it, and thought something was wrong with it, like the spilled something on it before packaging and just let it go. I didn't know it was SUPPOSED to be sticky, although I don't think that's any better. lol
Thank you Phelous, for bringing back such "fond" memories.
Oh dear. That either means the plastic degraded really fast, or they decided to launch it that sticky. I'm not sure which is worse.
@@magnatcleo2043
I mean considering the fact it was basically "put out to die" as they say in the waning days of the cheap media player craze before it died off completely. I had no idea these things were basically dead in less than 6 months but hearing that doesn't surprise me one bit.
Was the juicebox cartridge also empty for you
@@tylern6420 to be honest, I don't really remember. I probably would never have remembered only once to begin with, if not for Phelous. I haven't thought about that thing since 2004. LOL
I know I never actually used it, so I'm going to have to say mine was empty as well. Otherwise I probably would have at least checked it out with the thing it came with.
Either it’s made with really cheap material or it’s meant to be sticky and wet. Maybe that’s why they called it a juice box!
I had one of those growing up. I loved that thing. Fun fact: It's sticky because of the rubber they used for the color part of the case. It gets sticky as it gets older and starts deteriorating.
I think I got one with end-of-school-year money as a kid when we were visiting my grandparents or something. That or birthday money.
Nice Magileine icon btw.
did it take 4 minutes for the cartridge to work?
3:04 That problem you got is called 🌈Devulcanisation🌈
It's basically when rubber molecule chains break apart and the rubber decomposes. I encountered this recently again when i wanted to buy a case for my PS Vita. The first time i ran into it was when i dug out an old MP3 player i had. It's possible that my SE Xperia X10 Mini Pro, a 2010s phone will also have started decomposing.
I think I remember seeing commercials for this. What always got me about these mobile media players from that era was the price. The cartridges/disks were always pretty expensive for the length of video.
Length and quality we're both ridiculous/horrendous. I had to be reminded oh yeah we're talking 16 or 32 megabytes here. I highly doubt there was ever even one 64 MB version.
The juice box’s empty cartridge is a dust cover. The DS and DSlite had one for the gameboy slot!
I can only guess the dyes used to color the plastic were seeping off after the decade this sat in someone's garage.
Yikes...
That’s because the blue side is made of a softer plastic.
If I remember well, the chemicals used to soften the plastic are trapped in the sealed packaging and cause that stickyness over time (instead of evaporating slowly).
@@the999th
That seems possible, I've had stuff that was touched so apparently the oils from people's skin also help deteriorate the plastic and also apparently it's being exposed to the air and or any period of time and that plastic starts falling apart. That cheap soft plastic coating that was on everything is apparently just a ticking time bomb it's only a matter of time before it degrades and turns into goo.
no, it is the rubber coating suffering reversion.
@@lordeilluminati
All I know is it's irreversible and inevitable.
I honestly thought, having grown up through the '90s, that this was going to be some kind of "Ecto Cooler/entertainment system" thing where you could buy ACTUAL juice for the thing, and it'd be that weird sugar water that tastes more like wax than the waxy bottle it came in.
But it turned out to be EVEN GROSSER.
Now that would've been something ambitious. Probably would've been too expensive for the time.
@@ExtremeWreck I like that "too expensive" was the first thing that came to your mind and not "appallingly stupid and a health-hazard."
Because you're right: it was the '90s, those two factors wouldn't have occurred to them.
@@Alucard-A-La-Carte Yeah, $500 & all for an appallingly crappy health-hazard item made for your kid to have. NO THANK YOU!
So the Juice Box has the better visuals, but GBA video has the better sound. Videonow has nothing lol
Just watching Phelous try to clean this thing increased the amount of microplastics in my blood. Good thing JuiceBox never took off or Matel would've had a lawsuit on its hands.
I should be thankful that there was never any Barbie or He-Man related content on the Juice Box...
It didn’t start sticky. Rubberized plastic breaks down over time and turns to this mess.
I don't know Phelous, this seems like the optimal way to watch Ed, Edd n Eddy portably.
Man, crazy to think this JuiceBox thing was released... what? Two-three years before the first smart phone, depending on how you count?
We've come a long way in tech the last two decades.
Technically, -1 years. The Blackberry Quark launched in 2003. And the line between PDA/Smartphone was growing increasingly blurred.
@@XanthinZarda Was thinking of the first iPhone, but sure, fair enough. Man, PDAs feel so long ago... and yet we're all kinda sorta carrying one in our pockets. Crazy cool, if you stop and think about it!
2005 would give us things like the PSP, the iPod video and other devices that completely destroyed the juice box in every conceivable way including the ability to load your own content.The biggest problem with these things besides the atrocious sound and video quality was the fact you were trapped in some crappy little ecosystem with only the ability to buy authorized stuff from whoever put the device out. That would all change very very soon.
I first thought it was going to be like a combination media player and refreshment holder, but it turns out to be something a bit more sad and pathetic.
Lol I thought so too. That would be a weird gimmick but at least it would have something notable about it, even if ill advised.
I got one of these for Christmas as a kid, the first unit I opened would only play the demo video and no inserted cartridges. We had to drive an hour to Toys R Us to exchange it and my dad was so pissed
I’ve never seen this thing on store shelves, that’s how much this thing sucks. Yeah, even Zellers doesn’t want this thing. It’s stick with a kind of nasty-feeling rubber that fuses to you whenever you touch it, it’s worse than GBA Video and VideoNow. And, the stores that did get it were trying to get rid of it as soon as possible. This is an era when every company was trying to go all-in on the kid’s portable media player craze. My go-to media player is still the PSP and Portable DVD player. At least my portable DVD player doesn’t have an unpleasant sticky-feeling rubberized plastic whenever I touch it. Yes, smartphones do exist and everyone and their mom is watching movies on the go on them. But, I’m not one of them. Even with a bigger screen, I feel that watching movies on them will eat up the battery life and I want all of that battery to make calls on it. I’d rather watch them on a tablet, PSP or, portable DVD player. Or, even a GameBoy Advance for Fairly OddParents and Jimmy Neutron.
They called it Juice Box and I actually thought you could store juice in it or something. At least it's sufficiently sticky.
I’m a huge fan of this channel! Great humor and crazy funny stuff he finds! But, something scared me this time… watching him use a knife and cutting in the direction of his other hand! Woah! I installed carpet for a very long time and #1 rule is never cut in direction of other hand 🤣
What's weird is the direction he was cutting looked like it was with the blunt/dull side of the knife.
I couldn't figure out how it was cutting the plastic.
Lolz, that plastic blue thing reminds me of the kind of garbage rubber the Gizmo was made off. I have a few surviving tech items from the early 2000's era that also have a similar material and yeah...that stuff wasn't meant to survive even a decade.
I remember 2004 was the year I got my first USB stick, from a lifetime of using 5 inch and floppies, so I was amazed at the HUEG capacity of...512 MB. Still, better than the Juieced Bawx, hahah.
Seems this thing was solely conceived as a cashgrab gimmick between Mattel and media companies, probably even funded on those expectations of selling "episodes" of stuff you could already watch on TV on cable. So once it didn't catch on, they just went ET Atari mode and filled a landfill with these.
A shame, because screen and audio constraints aside, I think they could've really cashed in it making it a small, kid friendly music and media player that would only require their parents to load up their media from a computer and there you go, *proto Ipod on the go!* I mean, I was _amazed_ when a friend gave me his Sansa media player in 2008, I spent hours just cramming music and internet memes on the 2GB SD card he gave me as well.
Wabbu should give a Juice Box to everyone in Stoner German forest just to troll them.
Late 2004 early 2005 was really the end of these crappy little media players. 2005 would give us things like the PSP, the video version I believe of the iPod and various other far better versions of the technology including better low-cost alternatives.
Stuff like portable DVD players were cheaper and easier to get than ever and in general the world had left these crappy little players in the dust where they belonged. It really is a shame that there's like a landfill somewhere just full of this horrible crap but that was company thinking at the time push out a concept and damn the consequences.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Ah, glad you mentioned the portable DVDers, because IMO they were _sorta_ like the Juice Box but of course, they still had a good decade of popularity across the western hemisphere. In a certain way, it is a shame their makers didn't think ahead of time to the point where home DVD machines would inevitably turn obsolete, because a lot of those players could've had the potential to turn into a sort of massive media storage or even _mini-portable computers_ that could give lower income people a chance to have the laptop experience.
A dedicated mid-tier mothercard with a basic chip-grapher and soundcard along with a triple USB port could've meant keyboard, mouse and external memory support, and extending the viability of the DVD player, with their nice 5" screens and alright speakers, _well into this era as well._
I think that, seeing how our world is a tad short on viable precious electrometals like lithium and cadmium, we should design tech with functionality, limited as it might be, well into the future. The USB stick is my premier example of tech I can very well still see in use even two decades from now. Make the best with what we have now, so our descendants can enjoy tech as well.
Which is a diametrically opposite of the *absolute mongs that made the disposable DVD media.* Look it up, _mind blowing how those people operated under the assumption we have infinite resources on Earth!_ *ALL THAT PLASTIC WASTE!* Lolz.
ok, who the actual hell were their marketing team? They put 4 different bullet points on the "why you should buy our product" list, 3 of them of them require products that either didn't come with it or weren't available and the fourth was a lie!?
One of the many reasons I dont wanna be a marketer. Having to sell shit like that just hurts.
Ah yes, the good old days when you could just flat out lie to customers and that was somehow okay. Still sort of like that but this is the worst I've ever seen. Probably best it flopped as if it hadn't they'd probably have been sued.
To be fair to the Juice Box, its stickiness and playability are bad due to it deteriorating over time. Mattel made it as cheap as possible! 😅
So to be fair it's cheap crap, lol.
@@phelous To be fair to me, I didn't fully think that through! 😅😅
"Mom, I want a juice box"
Mom: "You have a juice box at home"
Juice box at home:
What does that mean? Am I supposed to know what the juice box says?
Apple juice box
"Turn on the juice!" That was the packaging telling you the cheap shitty plastic was gonna melt in your hands, it was a warning.
That crappy melting plastic is in stark contrast to my DS lite, which I've had for about 15 years and is still in near-perfect condition. The hard plastic has held up well, the hinge is still satisfyingly stiff and the battery can still last over 10 hours. It's almost like companies can use better materials to make something that doesn't turn into a crayon after a few years.
The problem with all portable kids media players, as I see it, is that most kids don't rewatch the same cropped down, low resolution videos over & over.
They aren't like a video game that you can play over and over to get better at or because it's a long game and you might forget things in it.
I was an anxious kid, and I actually DID watch a lot of the same movies/shows over and over again, but I'd never want to do it on the go. And especially not with such low audio quality.
@@Alucard-A-La-Carte and I imagine there certainly were kids that this was like a fidget spinner to. But I think that more kids got bored of it fast then really loved it. I mean one could own a GBA & watch some vids but also play games. Yes a GBA is more $ but if one could afford it I think the sales numbers say it all.
I admit it's a cool idea but at a time before streaming & before flash memory the need to keep cost low vs storage restrictions, lackluster screen/compression/audio quality just was too big a problem to overcome.
You were just supposed to keep buying vids but this thing was expensive. It was like $90 at release. It didn’t last long enough to get content. Small flash ram and SD cards were not cheap in 2004.
When the Gizmondo is just as ooey and gooey as this to touch, and yet has way better picture and sound quality, you know the Juice Box is a piece of shit
I just hate how many of these low quality terrible devices there were at the time. In a few short years you would see a complete shift away from these pixelated monstrosities and toward things of DVD quality and better. It was like going to the dark ages before the grand enlightenment.
There is only one thing to say when Phelous releases a new video: SWEET!
Now let's hide out in trash like Bonesteel!
SWEET!
Agreed😎
10:18, 🎵"I hate Splin-terrr!"🎵
So its like the Gizmondo in that the plastic it's made of melts overtime.
Yeah... pretty much.
If there’s a kids media player with Ninja Turtles on it, Phelous will find it and take it down a peg
If there's a video format that Ninja Turtles or Ghostbusters or even Mortal Kombat is on... Who you gonna call?
'Tis a futile exercise to try and clean the sticky, rubberized plastic. It's sticky because the material itself is breaking down into a gummy mush.
Btw Phelous you got Derek Savage’s Cool Cat movies and Gun Safety video. I’d really love to hear your opinions on them. Love or hate I guarantee it will make a hilarious review
Bootlegs from Mattel toys are less gross than this official Mattel product
Gotta love that rubberised plastic they used back in the day. A really nice effect that feels and looks good until years later when it degrades and goes sticky and gross.
The Gizmondo is famous for that. I have a controller that was finished the same way that's deeply unpleasant to use now.
That soft rubber touch 2YK style plastic felt so good back then now its turning back into liquid hence the stickiness. Literally has happened on anything from this era.
17:33 The best part of the review. That Vinny Mac impression was spot on. XD
[Old Man Vince:And now to do a shitty Stunner Job at Wrestlemania 38.]
@@BigEOT3
That was truly hilarious.
The man may be in excellent shape for his age but holy crap can he not act his way out of a paper bag.
Hmm. Nothing quite screams appealing like the obnoxious slurp of some child when initializing your multimedia player.
Thank you for making this. I have an odd... fascination with garbage like this. Old media formats, old platers, etc. and getting to see THIS? It's honestly a lot of fun.
I remember seeing ads for this all the time on Teletoon and YTV (Canadian Cartoon Network and Canadian... Paramount, I guess? IDK, they had Spongebob and stuff) and they even had a contest on 'The Zone' (YTV's host segments) and I remember the hosts seeming... just disgusted when they had to hold the thing.
I feel sticky after watching this video. Damn you, Juice box 🥤
I was always under the impression that they were also re-usable juice containers and wondered how that worked...
Thank you for showing me the error of my ways Phelous
I’m always fascinated in pre iPhone era of mobile media players, especially with how weird and ridiculous they are.
The ones for kids were always werid. Though I had a video now it was one of the few ways I could watch cable shows back then on the go.
It's less ridiculous and more just atrocious. What children were willing to put up with is truly amazing to me although I like to believe most of the smart ones were finding out how to get them off the internet at the time or any other way possible. At least the stuff for the GBA was essentially just a supplemental thing for the GBA. Yeah it looked and sounded like crap but at least it was cheap and you could get it on your already existing portable game console.
The idea of paying for these even worse in most cases little media players is horrible. It would all change when people could finally put whatever they wanted on a device.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu I mean to parents it might have made sense cheaper than a DVD player same with the media that came with it.
@@Zxzero36
Yup for those parents that only read bullet points on the front and look at things merely at face value.
Anyone that had a general concept would know the DVD player would be the better deal as you could especially back then still get movies from Blockbuster or any number of still existing video stores not to mention I believe things like Redbox or Netflix. (Honestly I'm not sure about Netflix and Redbox as those may have come after Blockbuster and Hollywood video were already well into their decline and soon closure) these players were either a cheap alternative for children that they were worried would break something nice or they simply didn't care. This definitely feels like what a parent but more likely good intentioned grandparent would get for a grandchild unintentionally getting them total garbage.
I think what I'm trying to say is the only people that would think this is a good deal were people with zero technological skills whatsoever or understanding of how things work.
mmm it's so facinating
I was talking to a friend about this video as I was watching it. I said to them that I was honestly surprised that 4Kids had a part in the system's video compression, and their immediate response was "4Kids are good at downgrading things. Literally"
Oh lord, I remember when me and my brother I think each had one
It sucked, but I feel like tried to convince ourselves it didn't. Kinda like that one story about some kids and Kangaroo Jack.
This is why DankPods puts gloves on before reaching into his gross bag of nugget MP3 players :V The title made me think of art phone accessories. Like the pulsing umbilical cord iPhone charger by Mio Izawa. Or Skin-On Interfaces human skin-like case allowing you to control your phone by pinching, twisting or tickling it
Whew. The 2000s were full of strange video players
Strange and often Tacky wastes of money.
@@eamonndeane587 nowadays you can watch videos and TV on your phone.
Well, that's what you got when you couldn't afford neither a portable DVD player or an MP3 player.
Boy, am I glad I didn't know this existed back then. I might have been dumb enough to buy it. Not even sure if it was ever available here, actually.
A good way to get rid of that stickiness is to use steel wool, or a fine grain sandpaper. You can grind that sticky layer off in the spots you can get to with it. That's if you don't care about the outside finish that this piece of sh.... urely fine piece of merchandise has.
Most of the things that I still want that have this layer of goo on it I just use a strong rubbing alcohol and a paper towel or something similar.
And you just rub until all the goo comes off. Unfortunately some stuff is literally all goo instead of just a thin layer. Those ones are either complete garbage or you gotta 3D print a new piece for it or something.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu That was exactly the case with the mouse I described. It has somehow absorbed a cable right into itself. So I had this mouse, with goo dripping all through the cables, and one of the cables was sticking out of the side of the mouse like it had grown some kind of strange umbilical cord. That mouse ended up in the trash. I wasn't expecting that to happen, nor do I ever want to see anything like that happen again. The cleanup job after that just pissed me off.
@@BlackburnBigdragon
Yeah the worst ones are the ones that are hiding away in boxes, closets or drawers somewhere.
They especially do not like heat so if they've gotten it all hot where they're being stored they will completely turn to goop if they've been exposed to even moderate heat. I recently went back to a huge collection of old multiple console controllers I had and so many of them had that damn layer I did one and that took a little while but it was worth it as the result was a completely usable and non sticky controller. But things like this that we're always crap and just aren't worth the effort I wouldn't even bother trying to save. Just not worth the effort. But you're right it's mostly the surprise you haven't checked on something way too long you totally forgot where it was or forgot it was even in there and like a horror movie you open it up and find just a complete gross mess. I've luckily not found too many of those but my mom had one of those soft touch keyboards and they are horrible. It didn't help that we lost the little dongle to it also so there was really no reason to even try to save it.
But yeah I hate that they ever thought that was a good idea.
And it's so prevalent there are so many things covered in this goo now.
Just call it a disgusting abomination.
JuiceBox: "𝕁 𝕌 𝕀 ℂ 𝔼 𝔹 𝕆 𝕏 "
Phelous: *"I HATE YOU!"*
Gotta love old plastic deteriorating!
I recently bought a Wii that had the rubber feet deteriorate just like the JuiceBox... well, not _just_ like the JuiceBox. It was *worse.* The things had turned to straight up goo, and left marks on my work surface. Lots of isopropyl alcohol helped with the stickiness and allowed me to get the rubber feet off; should help getting the stickiness off the JuiceBox too.
The shit we had to go through to watch shit outside
With the product's name and the title/thumbnail, I somehow thought this was a media player that doubled as an actual juice box
HOLY CRAP! I actually had one of these growing up! I used to use the SD card reader that came with it up through middle school before I lost it. This'll be a trip down memory lane.
EDIT: I also forgot this was advertised to have episodes of Megas XLR, so it would have been one of the few ways you could have watched that show legally!
(I felt legit pain having to type that out...)
Why is TMNT 2003 available in all of these strange low quality formats?
Was the process like
Tech company: "Hey 4Kids, wanna publish your stuff on our-"
4Kids: "Yes!"
Tech company: "But we didn't finish-"
4Kids: "Did I stutter?"
These portable video devices... always puzzled me. I get that at the time we didn't have a lot of choices at the time. But they all suck and have terrible screens and sound quality. XD
Video technology at the time was limited.
That's kinda just it XD. As a kid I was hyped to just have my favorite cartoons like Ed Edd n Eddy ON THE GO! At the time, the fact it had recognizable enough visuals and audio was good enough for the kids. I was honestly stunned that the GBA had the power to play like recorded audio, but yeah, these did not hold up well XD. I can see why they're mostly promoted towards kids.
@@scottylewis8124 Yeah, Iget they wanted something cheap but functional. But man, the sound quality was just soooooo bad.
@@hansgonk7122 I get it. Everyone's gotta get their fix. XD But there was some value waiting for it on TV. ;)
Indeed😅
I remember these getting advertised a lot back in the day, alongside the other video format things that came and went so quickly.
I feel lucky that I never truly missed out on anything worthwhile with any of these tbh
The only way to make the juice box more perfect was if Turtles Next Mutation was a pack-in! I mean imagine watching that van stock footage on this thing.
Also just watching Phelan touch the plastic makes want to wash my hands.
Nah, man. Coward Turtles Next Retirement is bad as fuck, but it doesn't deserve a fate like the Juice Box...
The fact that the video chips were 16.99 blows my mind
I never bought the cartridges, all I did was turn it on and off, weirdly enough the juice box came with a fake cartridge for some reason. edit I didnt think you would talk about the fake cartridge
If I were the head of this company I would licences Lawrence of Arabia or on this purely for a joke.
I know what you mean by stickiness. I am reminded of certain rubbery pretenders shells from Transformers that could get this disgusting.
Weird how many of these video players existed from this era. A precursor to MP4 players and smartphones, I guess.
The audio on these formats are so CRUNCHY!
"Dear JuiceBox Rey Mysterio, how do you type with boxing gloves on your hands?"
The juice-ified Cancelled clip is my favorite part of anything ever
That has to be the crunchiest audio quality I've heard in a long time
I was mortified that this also doubled,as a literal juice box and there was candy inside of this thing
Great video phelous, I really like the ashens vibe of this one
How did you rip the demo video from the unit? I still have mine but no juiceware carts except the sd card adapter so I can play mp3s. Alcohol removes the sticky coating nicely. Had to do that on mine.
I thought this was a Rerez video by the thumbnail. Was surprised to see it was Phelous.
Though it would be fun if they covered this type of thing.
It’s stuff like this that suddenly doesn’t make me miss the early 2000’s.
(Thank all the gods for streaming.)
Wow and I remember this stupid thing because my cousin had it for Christmas and a video pack for Yugioh. It was the most crusty and ugly thing I ever saw with the one saving grace being that it was way more fun speeding everything up lol. It made watching the episode ten times better and I think that is the first time I heard you vent some quality rage of I hate this thing as you were holding it. It did look very sticky but hey least we will always have you saying:TURN UP THE JUICE! tm lol.
13:23
Few will mention Rey Mysterio's oft-forgotten Strong Bad phase.
During the late 90's early 2000s it felt like there was a wave of cheap multimedia hardware being released as children's toys. I always thought that it was just old, aging hardware they wanted to get rid of.
I remember seeing ads for this back in middle school and wanting to get one. Seeing this is making me glad that I didn't.
The stickiness is one of the chemicals in a "soft touch" coating coming out of the plastic, leaving the remaining material sticky. You can fix it at least temporarily by rubbing talcum powder into it.
The stickiness is probably also why it isn't properly detecting when a cartridge is and isn't inserted. Some button or lever that the cartridge pushes in is likely stuck in the "in" position.
Also, this is from 2004? That's 2 years after the GBA SP came out and the DS was just around the corner.
I love that ridiculous *SLURRRRRP* JUICE BOX startup sound though.
that stickiness is what happens after being sealed in the package for so long
Rubberized plastic is the worst thing humanity has made. It's like designed to age into a slimy melty goo.
There's this new mini video player thing I've been seeing at Walmart.
I can't remember what it's called, but they're in the toy/action figure aisle and advertise stuff like Back to the Future and Friends.
To quoteth an olde Phelous video: "The juice is loose bro."
I remember when this thing was new, and I’m glad I never had one.
Good old rubber reversion, a lot of plastic from the 00s had a soft touch coating. Rubber starts out liquid and after a while the compounds used to make the coating solid breaks down and the rubber starts going back to being a liquid. Isopropyl alcohol usually does a decent job at removing it.