techmoan

2-XL - A.I. with an 8-Track. (VIDEO UPDATED)

Added 2022-07-02 09:32:47 +0000 UTC

The 2-XL ‘Robot’ has been on my to-do pile for years but now its finally worked its way to the top.

Some of my videos about quirky tech toys from the past have done quite well on YouTube. This one is likely to buck that trend.

Toys like HitClips and VideoNow are nostalgic for a large proportion of the YouTube audience. The original 2-XL on the other hand is likely only remembered vaguely by people my age or older…and we only make up a small proportion of YouTubes viewership.

The fact this child’s toy is primarily an unpleasant shade of brown shows that it is clearly an object from a very different era. The translucent and neon retina-burning colours of 1990s toys were seemingly unimaginable when this came out.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one fares with the viewers. Surely it can't do any worse than the head-camera review. I liked that video, but over nine out of ten subscribers are interested in something else. One day I hope to find out what that something is, but by a slow process of elimination it seems like it's not camera reviews.

Have a nice weekend and if things work out I might have another short video along for you in just a few days.

UPDATE

After yesterday’s preview I could see that the original version of this video didn’t dive deeply enough into how the audio on the cartridge was structured. To rectify this I’ve spent today shooting a new section that goes into this side of things in greater detail. The added section can be found between 19:30 to 27:00. Hopefully this improves the video rather than slowing things down too much.

The new version of the video is the one linked here and embedded above: https://youtu.be/amuRIydCoJk