I am still looking at these wonderful toys which I've overlooked for years,
from '2004 Second Best' and there's some little gems there you know;
that's a wind up which does something peculiar, I've got two electronic ones which are always
cheep cheep, and an extraordinary one here which is Japanese and does something most peculiar. So,
see what you think of them; and I'll have to do them probably on the table here;
I'll put the others aside and do them one at a time. The first one is a house, but it's a
wind-up, and there's an eccentric motor, so you'll probably guess... it's a house in an earthquake.
Goodness me - it just won't stay still.
Wow! That is quite something; what do you think of that? My goodness,
well that's what they experience in Japan, where they have earthquakes. Ah well.
And here's one of the little cheepy cheepy ones, which needs little batteries, so I
had to put a little battery in there, now I'll take that off - now he's going to do his stuff!
I'll see if i can get the sound a bit closer to the microphone; yep ... another one [a bark]
he's only doing one little [sound] I thought he did more than that, and I've got a feeling that
these Japanese toys do lots of things, but I haven't yet learned to do them. 'Hello'...
I think it's sound activated so... woo hoo
Yes it's sound activated, so I've got to read the instructions, which I can't - it's all in
Japanese! It does a series of functions; ah well, there we are. I leave them there; I'm
going to put this back in again, otherwise he is going to be interrupting the rest of the picture;
Here's the second one, which is extraordinary; this is a
most marvellous idea this; I'll bring it up to the camera because there's something very
strange about it - look at that mouth, look at it - extraordinary! What's going on there?
And look at the feet - they turn into little wheels -can you see? When you lift that back...
so this is an inertia wheel, so what you're going to do is put it on the table, and do this...
and it goes along; I'll do it a bit faster... wooooo...
my goodness me, oh doesn't he go well?
And he falls off the table if he wants to; and then you transform him back into a little figure
by pushing the shoes up like that to hide the wheels, and bring his arms up and put his head
down a bit so you can't see it so obviously, so an extraordinary idea that, quite wonderful, and I've
never seen a toy like that before or since. Very interesting. The last one is a little electronic
wonder again; it's got two little batteries inside it; it's a little dragon I think it is; so, take
out the baffle like that, put him on the table, and again I think this is acoustic; booo ... booo
No? Or perhaps I should push?
What's he gonna do? Oh, the eyes are lighting up! There's something happening here;
there's so much in the way of instructions which I can't get at because [they are in Japanese] No,
and it's not doing anything, oh yes yes, look look, ah there we are; and again...
it made some lovely noises just then, but he stopped doing it... booo!
The eyes definitely light up, and then the ears should waggle...
It's got wheels that turn as well actually;
well, it's back to instructions but I can't read the instructions!
Oh yes okay, oh left right left right, let's see if I can turn the other one off because he keeps
distracting me; so these are wonderful little creatures,
tiny little batteries needed; that one makes funny noises, this one I can't...
yes he's dancing isn't he! Ears flapping, left right left right left right with the body, green
eyes, sometimes left sometimes right, sometimes both; oh... there's a big program there if I could
read the Japanese [instructions] I could probably make it do all sorts of dance routines I suppose;
so there we are. Slightly baffling, not being able to follow something which is obviously a
very very complicated mechanism inside, and you only get a fraction of it when you're
playing with it because you can't understand it. Oh well. Never mind. Frustration, frustrations. We all have them!