Apologies if this has already been done; I wasn’t sure how to search for it.
Anyway, we were flipping channels this evening and they were showing “ET” on TV. I caught a glimpse of a Speak-N-Spell, which got me thinking about some of the old toys I used to have and love, and that brought back memories of good ol’ 2-XL.
2-XL was a robot educational toy that ran off of 8-track tapes. It had a few simple buttons that allowed you to answer multiple choice questions, and it was generally very silly. As I was about 7 or 8 years old when I had it, I loved it to death, and I wish I still had it.
Anyway, in the process of looking it up online tonight, I ran across a 2-XL emulator page! You can choose from all of the original tapes, and even follow along with the booklets in some cases. All with the original voice of 2-XL.
Yeah, so I’m a kid. What can I say? This amuses me to no end.
This is awesome! Just like the original toy, the virtual 2-XL will allow you to press any button at any time, thus changing the track it is playing from, even when you aren’t supposed to press a button.
8-track tapes? Wow. That thing was around longer than I thought, because I had a regular cassette version in the late 80s or early 90s. I wasn’t into it - I remember making fun of it more than anything else. I was (earlier) a very enthusiastic Speak-N-Spell user, though. One of my first memories is trying to spell “asshole” on that thing during a party. My mom thought it was very funny.
I (well, my mom) still had my 2-XL up until she moved into a smaller house a couple years ago and cleaned a bunch of stuff out of her basement. I had an 8 track one too, and occasionally used it to play 8 track music tapes - including my favorite soundtrack (at the time), The Muppet Movie.
I’m going to have to go play with that simulator. I loved confusing him by pushing the question button when it asked if I was a boy or a girl…
