my best my first sony

 

All this talk about buttons and simplicity reminded me of my favourite defunct brand of all time - My First Sony - a brilliant brand idea, but also a fantastic range of products. I have a number of bookmarked searches on ebay but this is the one that always cheers me up the quickest. These things are masterpieces, they're designed to be used by kids so they actually thought about how stuff should be used, they didn't just throw it all together and try to make it as small and black as possible. Many of them are genius, but my favourite is the alarm clock.

That entire big blue ring clicks round to move the alarm hand. Dead easy to use. The numbers are huge and legible. That big yellow button on top is the off thing. Easy to find. The radio tuning is simple analogue up and down. (Though it's broken, so I'm going to have to open it up some time.)

The best bit is that you can select how you'd like the alarm to sound; digital dog, digital chicken, digital train or digital er, digital thing. All of which are loud, grating and very en-wakening. Exactly what you want. (Actually they've got that same grainy, sampled, 80s crunch you get with an early Akai). Sometimes you want real buttons you can actually press. And you want them to do something silly. That makes for a great product.

Comments

[Ben]

Completely agree. I've tried to TrackBack to this post but it doesn't seem to be working.

So: http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2007/01/the_best_organi.html

[Rebecca]

I use the 'My First....' to add on to the front of things for a joke - (as always, I cant think of an example at the moment, but I am a comedy genius, so trust me, its usually funny!) and everybody understands what I am getting at, which just goes to show you how popular these things were.

[TomLR]

I like it.

I'm off to Ebay.

[Dino]

When you talk about "grainy, sampled, 80s crunch" you must be thinking about the sp1200 :)
http://www.vintagesynth.com/index2.html

[beeker]

I'm genuinely worried about your latest twitter update. Don't bang your head against the wall.

[matt even]

i've been thinking of gutting my "my first" walkman to fit my ipod.

[fink]

aaah, i remember my first sony! it was a sing alone tape recorder thingie. my sister and I loved it, I didnt know it was still available. must buy one. I've recently gotten back to retro toys with my neph. lego, crayola chalk and wooden whistles are up there for us at the mo. makes a nice change from complicated gizmos & battery operated things for both of us..

[Andrew Kingham]

Sometime in the nineties, I wanted a battery powered alarm clock that would wake me to the sound of the radio, with an easy to set the alarm, and a dial that was easy to read in the middle of the night with tired and bleary eyes. I bought this one and used it for years and years. Fantastic. Till the dial broke.

[paco]

I got one for my son (deep down I think it was for me) when he was 3 yrs old (now 11)and I was about to throw it away 'cause the clock was not working but I couldn't throw this unique alarm/radio. I opened up and fixed it but the volume potentiometer broke in two pieces. Does anyone know the resistance value of this potentiometer?

[brooks]

That article itself cheered me up. I loved the My First Sony I had, like many others it seems. I never had the alarm clock though, unfortunately. I loved the color red they used. It was cheerful and inoffensive. And it was a quality product, like you said.