Monday, May 10, 2010

"Talking" Simpsons Resistance...

So a friend of mine gave me a couple talking Simpson actions figures by Playmates (circa 2002) MIB. I was curious what made them "talk", as the box indicated that they would only "talk" with certain "Interactive Environments". I cracked open the Lionel Hutz blister pack and noticed he had a 3-contact device embedded in the sole of his left foot. Using my trusty Leatherman Micra, I popped out the device and discovered it was simply 2 resistors, each soldered down to connect all 3 contacts in series. I popped open the Brad Goodman pack and yanked his foot-embedded device and saw the same thing, but with different resistor values, of course. This is a really cheap-and-simply way to manufacture the characters, obviously. I went online to see if someone had the resistor values to that I might a switchable-resistance device and embed it into one of the characters so they could "speak" all the available character voices, but, alas, the only page I could locate in Google did not resolve and no Google cache of it... Thankfully, the Wayback Machine on archive.org didn't let me down!

http://web.archive.org/web/20020621223912/big-froggy.mit.edu/simpsons/krustyburger.html

I may go put together a "switcher" and get an "Interactive Environment" to play with...