Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2013 11:27:45 GMT -7
I would like to know if all of the Teddy Ruxpin tapes and cartridges ever produced have been properly preserved, in lossless format (i.e., FLAC or WAV), and safely stored so that they can never be lost.
I don't mean the ones that are out there that contain only the audio, in this case - I mean the entire content, including the animation data.
I wish to stress that I am *NOT* asking for downloads or anything of that nature, here. This is merely something that I believe is important to bring up and ask about, because apart from Teddy IV, all of the Teddy Ruxpin media that exists is stored on magnetic media, which - as enthusiasts in other fields this was common in are finding - is now beginning to lose its data, or even grow mould on the surface of the media, which will ultimately destroy it (however, in the very early stages, it is often still possible to very carefully clean this off and rescue the contents).
The most similar case to our own is vintage computing, where, as in Teddy's case, many of the old manufacturers and one-person-outfits responsible for the products concerned are long-gone, and thus the original master media is often not available for preservation for various reasons. These fandoms face a race against time to make sure as much of their heritage as possible is preserved, and I'm concerned that the same is also the case for ours.
The order of urgency for preservation in these cases always prioritises the oldest media. In our case, it's been nicely ordered for us by release date!
Most urgently in need of preservation are the tapes for Teddy I, because they are the oldest and most susceptible to losing their content, and to mould. Worst of all, Teddy I has some promotional tapes that only seem to have been issued in the USA (at the very least, I know of the Crest one, the Quaker Oats one which had an accompanying book, the hospital one, and the still-very-common-and-available-brand-new-from-WoWAndThen fire station trio), most of which are very rare - these are the most endangered of the Teddy I media.
The ones for Teddy II are up next, but thankfully there are a lot of these, because PlaySkool republished the exact same content after Worlds of Wonder stopped producing Teddy II. There is a video on YouTube by astromariopion demonstrating how to use the still-working internals and tape-deck of a spare PlaySkool Teddy II to preserve the content of these tapes (and then use them in Teddy III, amazingly). As far as Teddy II goes, the most urgent items would seem to be the ones that we know very little about - the non-English tapes - because they seem to be rarer, and have among them at least one release (All About Bears) that was not issued in English for this model.
Next are Teddy III's tapes. I suspect that the preservation of these would be hampered by the fact that he and his tapes were not available for very long compared to all of the other models (especially Teddy II). That said, they do still occasionally pop up new and sealed on eBay - although as far as magnetic media goes, new and sealed does not necessarily mean that the media in the box has survived, unfortunately.
Last of all, and thankfully the least-urgent of all due to the use of digital media, is Teddy IV. Nonetheless, these stories are also in need of preservation due to the changes made to all of them (even though in some cases they were minimal, such as adding the turn-the-page jingles to Lullabies), and due to the fact that they seem to be a bit tricky to find. I don't have any duplicate cartridges for Teddy IV, so I don't even know how they're stored. I would imagine that the format is MP3 or something similar (possibly OGG Vorbis? Unlike MP3, this does not require license-fees to be paid on products using it), due to it being space-efficient and therefore saving money on storage space, so the big issue would come from getting the files off of the cartridges. The advantage of preserving these stories is that the same animation system is used as in Teddy II and Teddy III, and as has been demonstrated with Teddy III, it is possible to put stories for another model using this system back to tape and then use them with other models that use the same system. My Teddy IV has succumbed to a motherboard fault that I cannot fix, so I may well carefully open up a cartridge if nobody else has already done so to date, and take a look at it.
Of course, best of all for us would be if Ken Forsse is already in possession of all of the master media for each of these versions, and has it all digitised, and stored safely in multiple locations, so that it's definitely safely preserved. I know how often this doesn't occur in other fields, though, as well as the various reasons things can end up that way, so I'm not going to get my hopes up *too much* for this, even though it would be the ideal solution to the problem.
Pictures of the individual tapes would be a good idea, too (as well as the packaging where possible, but this is less realistic), for a fully complete preservation effort, much in the vein of those done in vintage computing circles.
Additionally, the books are in need of preservation with high-quality scans, too. However, I know that there is someone here heading up such an effort, who has collected a lot of scans from other forum members, too, so this is less worrisome than the situation with the tapes.
Anyway, that's all. First, we need to know if the masters are safe, and if they aren't, I believe we need to begin efforts to preserve, collect, and safely store recordings and scans of all of the issued Teddy Ruxpin media, for all models, before it is too late.
What say all of you?
I don't mean the ones that are out there that contain only the audio, in this case - I mean the entire content, including the animation data.
I wish to stress that I am *NOT* asking for downloads or anything of that nature, here. This is merely something that I believe is important to bring up and ask about, because apart from Teddy IV, all of the Teddy Ruxpin media that exists is stored on magnetic media, which - as enthusiasts in other fields this was common in are finding - is now beginning to lose its data, or even grow mould on the surface of the media, which will ultimately destroy it (however, in the very early stages, it is often still possible to very carefully clean this off and rescue the contents).
The most similar case to our own is vintage computing, where, as in Teddy's case, many of the old manufacturers and one-person-outfits responsible for the products concerned are long-gone, and thus the original master media is often not available for preservation for various reasons. These fandoms face a race against time to make sure as much of their heritage as possible is preserved, and I'm concerned that the same is also the case for ours.
The order of urgency for preservation in these cases always prioritises the oldest media. In our case, it's been nicely ordered for us by release date!
Most urgently in need of preservation are the tapes for Teddy I, because they are the oldest and most susceptible to losing their content, and to mould. Worst of all, Teddy I has some promotional tapes that only seem to have been issued in the USA (at the very least, I know of the Crest one, the Quaker Oats one which had an accompanying book, the hospital one, and the still-very-common-and-available-brand-new-from-WoWAndThen fire station trio), most of which are very rare - these are the most endangered of the Teddy I media.
The ones for Teddy II are up next, but thankfully there are a lot of these, because PlaySkool republished the exact same content after Worlds of Wonder stopped producing Teddy II. There is a video on YouTube by astromariopion demonstrating how to use the still-working internals and tape-deck of a spare PlaySkool Teddy II to preserve the content of these tapes (and then use them in Teddy III, amazingly). As far as Teddy II goes, the most urgent items would seem to be the ones that we know very little about - the non-English tapes - because they seem to be rarer, and have among them at least one release (All About Bears) that was not issued in English for this model.
Next are Teddy III's tapes. I suspect that the preservation of these would be hampered by the fact that he and his tapes were not available for very long compared to all of the other models (especially Teddy II). That said, they do still occasionally pop up new and sealed on eBay - although as far as magnetic media goes, new and sealed does not necessarily mean that the media in the box has survived, unfortunately.
Last of all, and thankfully the least-urgent of all due to the use of digital media, is Teddy IV. Nonetheless, these stories are also in need of preservation due to the changes made to all of them (even though in some cases they were minimal, such as adding the turn-the-page jingles to Lullabies), and due to the fact that they seem to be a bit tricky to find. I don't have any duplicate cartridges for Teddy IV, so I don't even know how they're stored. I would imagine that the format is MP3 or something similar (possibly OGG Vorbis? Unlike MP3, this does not require license-fees to be paid on products using it), due to it being space-efficient and therefore saving money on storage space, so the big issue would come from getting the files off of the cartridges. The advantage of preserving these stories is that the same animation system is used as in Teddy II and Teddy III, and as has been demonstrated with Teddy III, it is possible to put stories for another model using this system back to tape and then use them with other models that use the same system. My Teddy IV has succumbed to a motherboard fault that I cannot fix, so I may well carefully open up a cartridge if nobody else has already done so to date, and take a look at it.
Of course, best of all for us would be if Ken Forsse is already in possession of all of the master media for each of these versions, and has it all digitised, and stored safely in multiple locations, so that it's definitely safely preserved. I know how often this doesn't occur in other fields, though, as well as the various reasons things can end up that way, so I'm not going to get my hopes up *too much* for this, even though it would be the ideal solution to the problem.
Pictures of the individual tapes would be a good idea, too (as well as the packaging where possible, but this is less realistic), for a fully complete preservation effort, much in the vein of those done in vintage computing circles.
Additionally, the books are in need of preservation with high-quality scans, too. However, I know that there is someone here heading up such an effort, who has collected a lot of scans from other forum members, too, so this is less worrisome than the situation with the tapes.
Anyway, that's all. First, we need to know if the masters are safe, and if they aren't, I believe we need to begin efforts to preserve, collect, and safely store recordings and scans of all of the issued Teddy Ruxpin media, for all models, before it is too late.
What say all of you?
