Do you remember Hit Clips? If you do, you can learn more about their history and how they work here in The Obscure Techbox!

About

Hit Clips is a series of micro cartridges that are played in an MP3 like deceive in which the cartridges are inserted. The toy was manufactured and produced by Tiger Electronics. The cartridges each contained a small sample of billboard top 100 hits of its time, although recordable hit clips were available as well as one with FM radio capabilities.

Originally, a cartridge could only hold…

Pop quiz: The DexDrive was a storage manager for use with what video game consoles? Can't figure it out? Learn about it instead on The Obscure Techbox!

About The DexDrive is a storage peripheral, released in 1997 and made by InterAct for use with the Playstation and Nintendo 64. With the included software, the user would connect the device to their PC and use it to erase, copy, and generally manage save files. For the Playstation version, the user would insert their memory cards into the device, the N64 version used the game pak cartridges. The…

The Magic Wand Speaking Reader taught kids how to read, but what really was the magic behind the toy? Learn about it here on Obscure Techbox!

About

The Magic Wand Speaking Reader is a children’s toy manufactured by Texas Instruments in 1982. The wand is actually a barcode reader, the child would run the wand on the barcodes under the sentences and the toy would read them aloud and sometimes make sound effects.

The Magic Wand had 16 books available for use with it ranging from Toddler to Early Elementary level. It was also known…

Computer Athlete was one of the first "exertainment" products on the market, but how did it work? Learn about it here on Obscure Techbox!

About

The Computer Athlete is a set of peripherals plus game meant to encourage people to exercise by combining it with video games.

After installing the game on their PC, the user would attach the controller to a convenient place on their exercise equipment of choice, a set of two infrared readers would be placed on either side on the floor. As the player moves their feet, the laser is…