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Post by lachlant1984 on May 2, 2012 18:24:16 GMT -7
I recently showed my Teddy Ruxpin to my 6 year old cousin, but before I showed it to her I made sure she washed her hands very well because I didn't want food crumbs and food residue all over Teddy Ruxpin. I allowed her to hold Teddy for a while and she really enjoyed playing with him, she understood many of the concepts in the stories, she loved it I think. It was the original Worlds Of Wonder Teddy Ruxpin that I showed her an unfortunately it wasn't working very well.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 29, 2012 2:53:07 GMT -7
I think it would be really awesome if the cartoon show and pilot episode of the TV show also became available for download via iTunes all over the world, I don't know if the previous DVD's were released outside of region 1 territory, North America, but if the show became available via iTunes and in multiple countries I'd certainly download it.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 23, 2012 2:54:13 GMT -7
I understand that the concept behind Spinoza Bear was being worked on in the early 80's, but I may be wrong here. I'm not really sure if there's any definite information about when Spinoza Bear was officially released, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was around the time of Teddy Ruxpin, however Spinoza Bear isn't animated.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 23, 2012 2:52:37 GMT -7
I honestly don't know - sorry about that. There are some video clips on YouTube of him, showing him telling a story about a goat with a missing horn - I believe that that story was the pack-in tape, but I don't know if they ever made any others. I haven't seen a My Talking Bear in action, so I have no idea what the stories from those are like, either. My best friend had a Gabby Bear as a young child, he lent it to me and I broke it sadly. Wooly The World's First Unigoat was indeed the pack in tape I understand, and there were other tapes, how many I don't know, nor do I know how many tapes there were for My Talking Bear, the only one I heard featured short nursery rhymes like Mary Had A Little Lamb etc. There was a video of My Talking Bear on YouTube at some point and someone left a comment on the video saying that they thought My Talking Bear sounded like a pedophile.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 18, 2012 16:12:09 GMT -7
I've been having more dreams about Teddy Ruxpin recently, I had one on Sunday morning, in this dream my best friend and I were listening to my Teddy Ruxpin, I'd just inserted a cassette that was supposed to upgrade the operating software in Teddy Ruxpin, but of course as we know Teddy Ruxpin is completely analogue and doesn't have any firmware or operating system of any kind. When I switched Teddy Ruxpin on I was told that the tape would install a new version of the software, and that I had to wait for a beep tone to sound, at that point the upgrade would be completed, I was told to allow the tape to run to the end and I was also warned not to turn off the power during the upgrade procedure or Teddy Ruxpin could be damaged. This morning I had another dream about Teddy Ruxpin in which I was listening to the songs at the end of The Missing Princess whilst eating some McDonald's chips in my bedroom, some of the chips got dropped onto the carpet and I picked them up and ate them anyway. The cassette tape ended and I wanted to hear the songs again, so I turned over the cassette to wind it back to the right spot so I could hear the songs, but when the tape started playing Teddy Ruxpin was telling a story about the characters in MAVO, he was talking about the characters voices and he mentioned their names, one character who he mentioned I believe is called Ickly, but I don't know if Ickly is a member of MAVO or not, I must admit I've watched very few episodes of the cartoon show. The characters in this story sounded like the Mudblups from the TV cartoon show.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 18, 2012 4:30:18 GMT -7
Oh, that would be a really cool series. And rather than kicking the tapes (using the term tape very loosely here) off by singing "Come Dream with Me Tonight", Teddy should sing the song that shares its title with this series, maybe not the whole song, just a clip like he usually does. I can just hear it in my head now. Yeah that's kind of what I'm thinking. "Come and discover the world with me." "Hi there, I'm Teddy Ruxpin. What country do you live in? Have you ever visited any other country before? You know, I was born in the land of Rilonia, but ever since I was young I always wanted to travel to the far off land of Grundo and discover new things, meet new people, and learn about different customs and cultures. I've recently been to a few countries in your world, and I'd like to share my stories with you, I learned so much during my travels around your world, I'd like to share them with you now, I'll talk about different countries and sing you some songs I've learned, are you ready? Good, let's go. I'd like to talk about my recent trip to the far off land of Australia, Australia is in the southern hemisphere, surrounding countries include New Zealand, Papua New Guinea....." You get the idea, that's basically what I'm thinking.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 16, 2012 4:18:39 GMT -7
Hi everyone. I've got an idea for some new Teddy Ruxpin stories, there may be another thread relating specifically to new stories and material for Teddy Ruxpin, but here's my idea for a series of Teddy Ruxpin stories that I like to call Teddy Ruxpin, come and discover the world with me. Basically it's a series of book and tape sets, and in each book/story Teddy Ruxpin visits a different country, talks about the country he's visiting and sings well known songs from that country. So for example if there were to be a Teddy Ruxpin discovers Australia program for instance, Teddy Ruxpin would talk a bit about Australia and then he'd sing some well known Australian songs, I'm thinking both traditional songs, in the case of Austrlaian traditional songs there would be songs like our national anthem Advance Australia Fare, then songs like Waltzing Matilda, Give Me A Home Among The Gumtrees, Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gumtree, Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, songs like that, and possibly some other well known more contemporary songs like Working Class Man, Land Downunder, Sounds Of Then (This Is Australia), Reckless, Solid Rock, that kind of thing, do you get the picture? There could be other programs released for other countries too, it would teach children about the world we live in and make them aware of other countries and cultures around the world, what do the rest of you think? For those of you on Facebook that are also interested in Teddy Ruxpin, I'm going to also post this to BlueOctopede's Facebook page so people who aren't on this forum can see it too, I hope you don't mind.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 16, 2012 3:46:49 GMT -7
When you put the tape into Teddy Ruxpin ask someone to look carefully at the tape as it runs through the tape path, when viewing the tape deck with a tape in place you should see both tape sprockets turning smoothly, if you notice that the right sprocket is turning but the left one doesn't appear to be moving, turn Teddy Ruxpin off immediately and remove the tape, use a pen or your finger to wind the tape back into the cassette casing. If you need to wind the tape back in hold the cassette so the open end of the casing is pointing towards the ceiling, insert your pen or finger into the right sprocket on the tape and turn the sprocket clockwise so that the tape is wound back into the cassette housing. It could be the pinch roller needs to be cleaned, but in a worse case scenario it could be that one of the rubber belts inside the tape deck has become stretched or may have snapped in half, repairing this means opening Teddy Ruxpin up and removing the cassette player from the panel on the back of Teddy Ruxpin. Belt failure is a common problem with cassette players and recorders, it's not just specifically a problem with Teddy Ruxpin.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 4, 2012 17:51:12 GMT -7
I don't and never knew exactly what titles were in the pipeline. I know of a few of the originals that were planned for release but never got there, but I can't really speak to what might not have been included. I just vaguely remember general chatter that not all the WoW stories would make the cut. Of course there wasn't enough time and resources for that to be explored anyway. I can only guess at what title may not have been planned for release, I'm thinking of the Answer Box and Picture Show titles because I just don't know if the BPT Teddy Ruxpin had the underlying hardware to support accessories like that of any type, certainly there's no connection socket on the toy that would allow such devices to be plugged into the toy, and I don't know of any wireless transceivers inside the toy that would allow for wireless accessories such as these, but that hardware may be there, I just don't know. I would be awesome if we could get a technical engineer from BackPack Toys on here to possibly tell us.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 3, 2012 18:27:03 GMT -7
I've been communicating with the YouTube user redilliop via Facebook over the past few days, he's been doing some research and has apparently concluded that the total running time of the new DVD's is longer than the earlier 6 set of DVD's but as we all know there were 65 episodes covered on the 6 pack and the same is true for the 10 pack as I understand it, so redilliop has suggested that maybe the 'protect yourself' clips etc are coming back, but of course this is all speculation at this point. I may have misread what he said, so if any of you are also on Facebook see if you can find and like BlueOctopede's page and you should be able to find the comments I'm speaking of.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 3, 2012 5:16:26 GMT -7
Well I'm glad I'm on this board, I wanted to say my piece on what's been talked about recently, that is the DVD's and the rumours about a new Teddy Ruxpin toy and see what the rest of you think, I guess as I've been saying that we'll wait and see what happens over the next month or so.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 2, 2012 2:10:38 GMT -7
I can't delve into specifics about the new TV/film treatment but it definitely takes things in a new direction while keeping the world we know from the WoW/Backpack stories and original cartoon recognizable. The BackPack version wasn't a cash grab. It was a faithful effort on all parts that sadly came on at a bad time. I worked for BackPack for a time during the initial release and their energy was sincere. They did tie in some nostalgia in their marketing but that was only good business sense. The BackPack stories weren't remastered simply to 'change things up' either. There was very little time between the day the agreements were signed forming the creative partnership between WoW and AlchemyII and the day they wanted Teddy on the market - and the stories didn't have time to be completely finessed back in the mid 80's. The BackPack versions were how Ken would have liked the story to be laid out originally, including the more streamlined artwork. I was lucky enough to be in the office when Ken was working on one of the remasters and got to choose Princess Aruzia's eyecolor (as her eyes had just been black dots in the original artwork) I'm sorry if my posts sounded negative at all in regards to BackPack. I hope that wasn't the impression anyone got because it couldn't be farther from the truth. While I am not privy to the business end of it - that is solely the concern of AlchemyII - I was definitely a witness to some of the creative side of that release and I can't speak ill of anyone's actions in that regard. The timing just didn't prove to be right. :/ You mean you actually were working for BackPack Toys to some extent Josh? Wow, what an amazing thing to have happen to you, it is the same the BPT Teddy Ruxpin didn't do as well as it should have. I know there weren't too many stories released for that Teddy Ruxpin sadly, I'm guessing the Global Financial Crisis was in some part to blame for that, right? Or am I simply missing something that should be staring me in the face that I don't understand. I guess I've quite down on the BPT Teddy Ruxpin because of a few reasons, chiefly the extreme lack of software available for it given how many tapes came out for the original Teddy Ruxpin in the 80's, but also it would have been great if they'd come out with a Grubby companion for it, I know on the original Teddy Ruxpin there's the socket that Grubby plugs into, but I don't believe there's any underlying hardware to support a Grubby toy for the BPT Teddy Ruxpin. BPT certainly tried with their version of Teddy Ruxpin, maybe I'm far too critical of them for things that as far as I know may have been beyond their control, but I just think they could have perhaps done more with Teddy Ruxpin given the technology that's around now compared to 1985. I looked at the BackPack Toys website in early 2010, as I say I suspect this is when they closed up shop, and from memory the only products they listed on their site were Teddy Ruxpin and the software cartridges and stories for it, do you know if BackPack Toys produced any other toys or children's products not relating to Teddy Ruxpin or other similar toys? One thing I was disappointed about with the BackPack Toys Teddy Ruxpin is that they for whatever reason omitted the important stranger danger message and the 2 songs that you'd hear on the original Missing Princess cassette tape, you know the 2 songs, When You're In Charge and Let's Keep The World Safe (For The Children), instead, the Treasure Series of 3 cartridges ends with Come And Discover, very well, but I still think that safety message should have been kept in as it's still very important, it's just as important now as it was in the 80's if not it's even more important now. The YouTube user redilliop has told me that in the 80's Teddy Ruxpin was the "official spokes bear" for some child protection centre of some kind, I'm getting way out of my depth here, I have no idea when that 'contract' was dropped, do you?
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 1, 2012 16:51:12 GMT -7
Trust me, you're not the only one who wants to see Teddy Ruxpin back on the toy store shelves. One more thing, using the old material would depend on how much was saved after Playskool had their time on Teddy Ruxpin. The artwork on the books were changed for Yes!, to incorporate the new tunic Teddy had, and the Backpack books were changed even more, even the dialogue, from what I've heard from The Airship on Youtube, was changed slightly, and depending how the tapes were recorded, the originals might not even exist anymore, since it's been 20 years since the Playskool Teddy came out, and things degrade over time. But, who knows, maybe we'll get something close to the originals in the future. I suspect the original recordings would have been made using very high quality studio grade open reel tape in the 80's when WOW brought Teddy Ruxpin out, somewhere around the world there is probably a great big archiving storage unit full of boxes and boxes of open reel tapes of the story recordings for Teddy Ruxpin, obviously at least some of that original source material was still available when BPT came out with their Teddy Ruxpin. Yes some dialogue was changed, but the dialogue that was added came from The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin, the live action TV show, so clearly there was and hopefully still is the original source material for that. All the original source material was most likely recorded in analogue form unless AlchemyII used a digital form of reel to reel tape and I believe such digital R2R formats existed, but the cartoons would of course have been digitised for DVD release and clearly some of the original Teddy Ruxpin stories were digitised for the BPT Teddy Ruxpin.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 1, 2012 16:39:39 GMT -7
I understand your point about the synopsis editor possibly being misinformed Josh, and here's something that may back things up to some extent, you know I'm hoping very much for a new Tedyd Ruxpin toy as much as others on the forum, but now I'm going to make a statement that sounds like I'm digging Teddy Ruxpin's grave so to speak. Have any of you noticed on the Amazon page for these new DVD's they've written Phil Baron's name as Phil Baroni? Blueoctpede mentioned this to me the other day because she saw the same thing on the Image Entertainment website, it has all the same info and details as Amazon does. Now I know this is a very small thing, just a simple typing error possibly, but it does make me wonder if the editors are being a little bit sloppy perhaps, just a thought. Who knows if we will see this same typo on the DVD's when they come out. I guess it won't be long until we do find out because I'm sure YouTube users like blueoctopede, teddysonicfan90, applesocks89 and others will make videos about unboxing the DVD's and their fist impressions of them and then we'll get a better picture of what's happening here. I just thought I'd put that out there and see what the rest of you think.
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Post by lachlant1984 on Apr 1, 2012 16:21:31 GMT -7
one criticism that got levelled at the BackPack Toys version was that it was some sort of nostalgia cash-grab, with no attention paid to how heavily-revised the accompanying stories were. You're right, and it really shows now that I think about it, I've seen the ads for it on YouTube, you are so right, it was a cash grab really, and that saddens me. I'll come back to your other comments at some point once I've worked out what to say about them.
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