My cousin and I had these monster high knock off texting things and they only really worked if we were in the same room. But we still used them but only to send each other ASDFMovie quotes which is like the most mid2000s thing I think I’ve ever done
CJ Daly I wanted those so badly bc they were just not phone enough to get taken at school (at least the ones I saw were) and I coulda easily used to chat in class
"Step off, Ninja Mom. It's not a cellphone!" This line has haunted me since my youth. Almost disturbing hearing it again and not just repeating in my head.
Regarding the 'over' thing: You *always* say 'over' when using an SSB modulation, because you can't hear when the other side stops transmitting. There's no carrier to drop, so you are constantly hearing the background noise and just hear the transmission on top of it. When you are talking on FM, you generally don't need to over because the other side hears the end of transmission - either in the return of static, or in the distinctive sound of VOX or squelch flipping. You may still over in the case of really bad noise conditions.
The Cybiko had an amazing homebrew community because of the sweet spot on pricing and the manufacturer actually supported it. I loved seeing all the new software (mostly games) that came out for it.
As a kid I loved these kind of "social" toys, but I never got any because I didn't have friends and that was kinda of a requirement to be able to play lmao
concept: post apocalyptic society that has figured out how to extend the range of pda toys out of necessity because most cellphone screens have become too broken to use or fix
"it has a VGA cable to connect to the internet" mate, thats a serial port, you would of used those back in the 90's since USB was still new and had yet to be adopted by the market. it would of been funny to see you try and get it working on a modern desktop with VGA! ha!
Isaiah Munns I remember in 2004, when 13 seemed young to get a cell phone. My brother was 5 years older than me and didn't get a cell phone until a little after I did. Now, my mom drives school bus and says the things are everywhere with kids as young as mid-elementary or younger in some cases. It's nuts! I only got a phone at 13 because I was away at school during the week and there was no phone accessible!
You didn’t mention the IM-ME wireless messenger toys by Mattel! Someone figured out they can open any garage door with it since they both operate on the same frequency
I remember a friend and I each got Cybikos when I was in 8th grade, I actually did send in for the MP3 player as well. The MP3 player worked okay, the main limitation was that it used SmartMedia cards which were expensive at the time, I believe I settled for getting an 8MB card for about $30 on ebay and then I had to downconvert songs to horrible bitrates to fit more than 2 of them lol But the texting was kinda fun for me and my friend at the time when we would have separate classes on opposite ends of a wall, felt futuristic
8:20 with the VGA cable? You mean the serial cable? I got a cybiko. I think I was an adult at the time. I used it as an ereader for a long time, and it had a surprisingly good speed reader program built into it.
Gotta love nostalgia over merch that is so much more awful than all the modern conveniences. I still love old LCD games like the Dino Dex, Tomagachi, and Bio Bytes.
New Tamagotchis have so much more features than any smartphone pet apps, I can say it as a collector myself, those vpets apps are so fucking basic despite having better graphics than a color display toy, with the exception of Pakka Pets which is heavily inspired by Tamagotchi, a much better Tamagotchi app than the actual official app I can say
I STILL lie to myself from time to time, say I'll keep my tamagotchis alive this time, and put new batteries in before letting them die a day later. :X
Had a Cybiko as a kid! The only use I ever got out of it was the Christmas when I got it because my cousin also got one, so we chatted at my grandma's house. Otherwise, I never encountered another cybiko owner ever again. And yet, I'm still nostalgic whenever I see it get brought up.
2000s electronic gadgets were decent for play but not for messaging Cybiko it was a bad Game Boy meets PDA until Nintendo DS and PSP defeated the kids handheld electronics
@@FlintG Oh yeah that thing was a nightmare. My mom bought it and I had it for a few weeks, and then my dad felt so bad for me he bought me a flip phone. She was pissed but god it was a shitty move for her to buy that thing in the first place 😂
I had this odd purple thing that was exactly like that Hello Kitty one. I have no idea where I found the patience to type out words with that awful layout, and my confusion is worsened by the fact that I owned both of the communicators and only ever sent messages to myself.
First off, love the nostalgia trips seeing as how I grew up with damn near all of this, second is be VERY careful when letting Audible sponsor anything. In case you didn't read the disclaimer all the way through, for a company that sells audio books, you cannot show a book in a video, ANY BOOK, say the word book, basically if you describe the product or mention a certain series like Harry Potter, they'll terminate the deal. A friend of mine accidentally said the word book twice during their promotion of it and the next day they got a termination notice as well as a massive bill for their "trial" and book they got. Just letting you know so you can keep your head above water and keep making this amazing trips down memory lane.
I feel like I'm one of the few people who actually really liked having a FireFly phone as a kid... 😂😅 I was still in elementary school when my family got my sister and I each one and I used to put it in my pocket on field trips in case I got lost or had an emergency. It was really useful during a time when most kids didn't have mobile phones at all, tbh! The only thing I didn't like about it was that I was constantly afraid I was going to bump the 911 button on accident! 😂
When I was kid, around the time spy toys were getting big, me and my cousin convinced our parents to buy us these watches that had a little keyboard, and could transmit messages remotely. In theory.. In practice we pretty much had to have them touching for anything to transmit. Had a quick google, but can't find them at all.
I remember finding a Firefly on sale at target during a road trip with my mom. She bought it for me but when we got home my dad refused to pay to set up the line bc he was so cheap so I could never use it as an actual phone and I have no idea what happened to it ;^;
My dad discovered the Cybiko when I was a kid and bought loads of them on eBay to tinker with, because they could be had dirt cheap back then. This would’ve been within a few years of their commercial failure, so there were a ton of them in circulation new in the box. I think we’ve still got a bin full of them back home somewhere. I had one, my brother had one, we gave them out to friends since we had so many. They were great. I remember some truly wild and profane text chat shenanigans on the school bus. We had a CD-R (also from eBay, I think) filled with hundreds of programs and games for them. You could fit that many on a CD-R because everything to do with these things was minuscule in size - the internal memory was less than 1MB, but I think Lost in Labyrinth, the FPS featured briefly in the video, was one of the heftier programs at about 50KB. There were some great games too - plenty were nothing special, but some of them (like Labyrinth) had some great pseudo-3D graphics, and even many of the others looked pretty good, and that was on a 160x100 monochrome display with 2-bit “color.” They got a lot out of the limited sound capabilities too - some of these games had great sound design and even music; I remember Lost in Labyrinth featuring a real banger. They seem to have treated that one as a AAA title, which makes sense since it came preinstalled on the Cybiko - if I remember correctly, there’s a dedicated button along the top that runs it. That’s a lot of ranting to say that I remember these weird little things really fondly, and it’s always great to see them popping up places.
I was born in '92 and this is all new to me, everyone I knew had a mobile by year 4 or 5, so around 9 or 10 years old. And after school we would text each other, or use the landline to talk, or use MSN messenger. If we ever saw a kid with one of these toy phones I'm sure we would have picked on them mercilessly.
8:18 "...the only way you could connect is by plugging in with a VGA cable." so.... we're gonna just speed past that like it isn't important, then. a **serial cable**, maybe?
I remember begging my mom for a ChatNow, and both I and my best friend got one. I think we messaged eachother all of a small handful of times. I've since lost it to time and relocation but it'll always be tucked into my memory as something neat and fun to me.
Oh the Cybiko. I had 1, or 3. Two regulars, one I still have to this day. Same color as yours. The other I got in 1999. Then I got the extreme too. You could go truly wireless and get email and browse the web. Albeit required another Cybiko, a Serial link cable and a PC. It’s range was abysmal. But I recall on my trips to Nashville TN as a kid trying to discover other Cybiko users. There were never any. But I loved the open games and apps. Yes, those gum stick batteries die, and corrode. Mine did. Mine didn’t work when it was new that well. Also the charging port would break off. Young me didn’t know how to solder, so I used tape to pad the connector back to the board. It looked awesome for its time though.
I was OBSESSED with my cousins handheld IM thing that reminded me of a sidekick. It was only for IM though and I think you had to be logged in on her computer still to use it around her house LOL
I kinda still wish there was stuff like this targeted to kids under 13. Parents these days expect technology to raise their kids. You also sometimes see children who don’t know any better posting borderline sexual content on social media free for grown adult strangers to see. I feel like if there were social toys for kids (with much better technology) that could teach them how to use smart devices while also having restrictions that don’t give them full access to the internet, they might be a better alternative than letting young kids do whatever they want on social media or sheltering them from it entirely. But alas, I think the smart device craze is too huge for these toys to ever make a comeback. I just hope parents can start being smarter about how much time they let their little kids spend on the internet and what apps/sites they use, while also not being too sheltering.
The cybiko could relay through more than 200 units using an early form of mesh networking. Also, a Cybiko connected to a computer could act as an access point between the host computer's internet connection and other cybiko's in the network.. The software part of the business continued to make cellphone games long after the actual communicators ceased production. The Cybiko Xtreme was also usable as a digital walky-talky.
I choose to interpret the lyrics as “Call me- BEEP ME- if you want to reach me” as if she was correcting herself. That’s the great thing about art. I’ll interpret it how I want just to make a joke in a UA-cam video work
This reminds me of when I was little and would stand at my window with my DS, with either pictochat or mario multiplayer open to the "searching" status, thinking that maybe someone else would play with me. I live on a 200 acre ranch, no one ever came for reasons that are obvious now lmao.
I had a firefly. My mother was a paramedic and was at work a lot, so she gave us a firefly for emergencies. I was in charge of the firefly and my sister was in charge of the pepper spray. We wore both around our necks the entire time she was out lol
Hey Billiam, I love your videos and especially the ones on monster collectors! I was wondering if you could do an episode on Dinosaur King? It doesn’t get much coverage but it was definitely part of a ton of childhoods, including mine! All I remember was the card game, but apparently the anime is on Netflix! Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see what you do ^^
CrAzYgIrL Yeah exactly! That’s what I remember. It was everywhere where I live. We always traded cards during soccer practice, and I thought I was the coolest with the T-Rex, but looking back I have a feeling it wasn’t the best card
Does anyone else remember the device that allowed you to text a message and save it to a little charms? The gimmick was you could pass the charms to your friends so they could read them between classes. The charms could be worn as jewelry even? I think? I feel like it was by the same people that made that voice-activated diary.
For complicated reasons, the license-free frequencies in the UK and in Europe are not the same. Not compatible. Supposed to be anyway. In practice lots of tourists going one way or the other bring radios with them (Don't bring the family to a major theme park without a way to keep in contact if the kids wander off!), so unintentional infringement is commonplace.
I had a purple version of the hello kitty contraption. And I would have never remembered if I hadn’t had watched this video. I completely forgot my sister and I ever had them
I had the video camera that you showed at the beginning. I made a recreation of lost with that movie when I was like 10. My little sister had the hello kitty tester things and it took FOREVER for us to figure them out. Technology has changed
It is not a vga cable but a serial cable the same stuff that is on the data pins of a usb cable, so you can get an adapter and connect it to a modern pc.
The chat now advertisements had them taking pictures in color, but they took pics in black and white, witch as a kid I had felt lied to when I found this out after my brother got them.
Did anyone else notice the adult joke at 11:30? He literally got her number and his "wilted" antenna immediately sprung with he give a sly look to the camera...
Me and my friend got matching winx themed text things? I honestly think it’s super cute but it literally never worked right. I still have it in my room as a cute decoration.
Oh my God, I remember we had two of those Chat Nows and we legit got them for when my sister and I accompanied Mum with grocery shopping, in case we got lost I loved them
Along with that maybe he could talk about the leapster and other kids learning/game/whatever devices since i dont think he's done a video on those before.
Abby Collins I watched the old dub as a kid. The voice acting wasn’t terrible but they westernised all the girls names (Strawberry Mew was named ZOE for some reason) etc.
i remember in fourth gtade wjen we got to take charter busses to the state capital, and on the form aboit the trip, it saod that pictochat wasn't allowed. Those were the days...
I LOVED sms text messengers and only recently got rid of the ones I had. I loved them, I had the hello kitty ones, and I only got rid of them because none of my friends ever used them with me. The fun thing though was that in addition to the hello kitty ones I also had another set that also used infrared transmission so you could cross over the different messenger devices no problem. The other set I had looked more like the smartphones we see today, they were still making them into the early 2000s when I was a kid. man I hope I can get some one day and find a use for them, I loved the idea I just never had anyone who wanted to use them with me.
OMG I LOVE THIS !! , I remember posting a comment on another video about you reviewing stuff like the chat now and you did a video on it . Thank you so much man :)
I never had any friends as a kid (or at the very least none that lived directly nextdoor to me), so these devices would've been useless to me. Sidenote, is anyone else bothered when TV shows and movies show kids with walkie talkies that can communicate across town? They even did this in Stranger Things, this trope isn't dead yet!
I had the pink VideoNow. I got it a market and would stay up late at night watching Spongebob and That's so Raven under my blankets. It was magical to me. 😂
![Spy Gear Was Weird [Eye Link Communicator, Tracker System, and More] | Billiam](/img/n.gif)
My cousin and I had these monster high knock off texting things and they only really worked if we were in the same room. But we still used them but only to send each other ASDFMovie quotes which is like the most mid2000s thing I think I’ve ever done
Desmond the moon bear
CJ Daly I wanted those so badly bc they were just not phone enough to get taken at school (at least the ones I saw were) and I coulda easily used to chat in class
DIE POTATOES!
look out! he’s got a nose!
a e s t h e t i c. Lol being a 2000s kid was fun.
"Step off, Ninja Mom. It's not a cellphone!"
This line has haunted me since my youth. Almost disturbing hearing it again and not just repeating in my head.
i swear to god that clip unleashed some kind of lovecraftian horror in the back of my mind...
kamenkewl elderich abominations in the form of men in black/agents of the matrix?
My friend saw the video playing and could hear it even though I had headphones on
You, uh... You good?
you missed the classic two tin cans attached by a string
𝖜𝖊 𝖘𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖆𝖘 𝖆𝖉𝖚𝖑𝖙𝖘 𝖑𝖔𝖑
@@LunarEclypse That is legit awesome. I am not trying to sass, I'm being honest. That is cool.
...I wish I had friends...and tin cans...
When I saw that in cartoons I always thought it was just cartoon physics. Didn't find out until later that it was actually a real thing that worked.
I'm watching this in one of those 😂
So when I was younger I always wanted to do that but I never did so, does it actually work?
You forgot the bootleg plastic phones that played a very compressed and short version of smile butterfly
I can still hear that jingle in my brain to this day. I worked in a game room with prizes. I saw a LOT of thise.
shit someone else made the joke, dammit
@Chippy lmao
AIAIAI IM YOUR LITTLE BUTTERFLY
Never forget.
I remember having a lot of fun at lunch with my friends on pictochat
Pictochat was ahead of its time.
I loved pictochat. It was so much fun
Pictochat was great. So many pitch black blobs sent to random people
Same, my cousins and siblings used to play hide and seek but after a while give hints to where we were hiding through pictochat. So much fun!
So many hand drawn dicks sent to friends in study hall!
Regarding the 'over' thing:
You *always* say 'over' when using an SSB modulation, because you can't hear when the other side stops transmitting. There's no carrier to drop, so you are constantly hearing the background noise and just hear the transmission on top of it.
When you are talking on FM, you generally don't need to over because the other side hears the end of transmission - either in the return of static, or in the distinctive sound of VOX or squelch flipping. You may still over in the case of really bad noise conditions.
You forgot to say over, over.
I turned on the roger beep on my baofeng UV-5R. no need for me top say over when done.
But saying over is fun, over
Beeping wasn't the ONLY way to reach Kim Possible.
You could also call her.
Or post on her own website.
WorldsWorstBoy but ONLY when we wanted to reach her.
IF you wanna reach her.
Dumb kids. Kim retired back in 2007, so neither calling or beeping her will work.
@@SpyderT22 Calm down lol
The Cybiko had an amazing homebrew community because of the sweet spot on pricing and the manufacturer actually supported it. I loved seeing all the new software (mostly games) that came out for it.
Men’s room 2 was da bomb
As a kid I loved these kind of "social" toys, but I never got any because I didn't have friends and that was kinda of a requirement to be able to play lmao
Oof
Same
Ditto
I had a Cybiko but never found anyone else with one.
Ohhh, ouch. I'm in this photo and I don't like it.
just throwing this out there: ipod touch killed them all.
The Ipod touch will be going to trial on Monday for it's crime.
touchscreen gadgets killed 2000s mini pdas
iPod Touch? Oh, you mean iPhone before the phone feature.
Lewa, Toa of Air IPhone for broke people. I know because I was one.
why did the iPod touch even get popular? You could get an actual phone for a quarter of the price
Oh man, some friends and I all got Cybikos in like 5th grade, I totally forgot about that thing
Jiru Candy Thank you 😊
concept: post apocalyptic society that has figured out how to extend the range of pda toys out of necessity because most cellphone screens have become too broken to use or fix
Can I borrow that idea please? If not,I don't mind.
@@sharonspears-mandeville2369 im sure what ever you were going to do with it would be different from anyone else's direction, so go for it!
farley pants sweet,thanks.
I was about to comment the same thing
@@delilahl5934 honestly a Cybiko redesign for 2020 lol
Cybiko sounds like a Russian word trying to disguise itself as a Japanese word.
That's because it is.
Cyka Blyat
Soooo.... The kuril islands?
King Dee, Gaming and Memes it isn’t, it was a made up word that tried to sound Japanese
Thats what I thought too
I had strict parents but I couldn't even convince them to get me a Firefly. Their paranoia was on a weird level.
But russians!
I'm late but could you explain their reasoning
Just use the home phone bruh 🤦♀️
Paranoia will destroy ya
@@LegitMan335 jamiroquai?
OMFG I HAD THAT HELLO KITTY THING AND I WOULD SNEAK IT INTO CLASS AND GIVE ONE TO MY BFF WHO SAT LIKE 2 SEATS OVER AND WE THOUGHT WE WERE SO BADASS
Nothing says bad ass rebel like Hello Kitty
I had a cybiko
I remember using the TIGER electronics Pokedex as a calculator in elementary.
This would have been back in '05 to '07.
Ah kindergarten
"it has a VGA cable to connect to the internet"
mate, thats a serial port, you would of used those back in the 90's since USB was still new and had yet to be adopted by the market.
it would of been funny to see you try and get it working on a modern desktop with VGA! ha!
m8*
samiscool51 Yeah I was thinking that cant be vga had to be serial.
Have. Would have.
Btw there is a serial to usb adapter on ebay or amazon i think
Obviously he got it to work somehow seeing as he was able to download games
You're wrong about Kim. She takes calls. It's in her theme song.
jigglypuff52 so... she’s a CALL girl? Eh? Eh?
@@Aniimefaan go home
And if you want to page her, it's okay.
Moms in the 2000's: NO PHONES!YOU'RE TOO YOUNG
Moms now: HOW DARE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET POST NOT CHILD FRIENDLY CONTENT?YOU HAVE TO BABYSIT MY KIDS!
Lol moms in 2000s’ could afford actual baby sitters.
Well...lets be real 2000’s moms weren’t idiots
My little sister has been watching adult UA-cam not UA-cam kids since she was three
Dude, said moms just put their kids in front of a tv. Mom now are just realizing what a stupid decision it is that let the Internet baby sit.
Isaiah Munns I remember in 2004, when 13 seemed young to get a cell phone. My brother was 5 years older than me and didn't get a cell phone until a little after I did. Now, my mom drives school bus and says the things are everywhere with kids as young as mid-elementary or younger in some cases. It's nuts! I only got a phone at 13 because I was away at school during the week and there was no phone accessible!
You didn’t mention the IM-ME wireless messenger toys by Mattel! Someone figured out they can open any garage door with it since they both operate on the same frequency
When I was little, I thought walkie-talkies were freakin' cool.
. . .Over.
I'm an adult a I know walkie-talkies are freaking cool
@@ricardopagan7143 Forgot to say over. Over.
𝖞𝖊𝖆 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖆𝖗𝖊
𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗
They still are. Just the high-power Baofeng ones
When i was little i thought walkie talkies are cool af. I ended up as a ham radio operator as a teen
Zoomer: "Oh sick, just like Assasin's Creed."
Millennial: "Oh sweet, just like the Matrix."
Boomer: "Oh neat, just like a switchblade."
What about Gen X?
OtakuUnitedStudio we don’t talk about them
@@accidentalmadness1708 :(
@@accidentalmadness1708 why
Because gen x birthed millennials. That’s why.
I remember a friend and I each got Cybikos when I was in 8th grade, I actually did send in for the MP3 player as well. The MP3 player worked okay, the main limitation was that it used SmartMedia cards which were expensive at the time, I believe I settled for getting an 8MB card for about $30 on ebay and then I had to downconvert songs to horrible bitrates to fit more than 2 of them lol
But the texting was kinda fun for me and my friend at the time when we would have separate classes on opposite ends of a wall, felt futuristic
8:20 with the VGA cable? You mean the serial cable?
I got a cybiko. I think I was an adult at the time. I used it as an ereader for a long time, and it had a surprisingly good speed reader program built into it.
Gotta love nostalgia over merch that is so much more awful than all the modern conveniences. I still love old LCD games like the Dino Dex, Tomagachi, and Bio Bytes.
New Tamagotchis have so much more features than any smartphone pet apps, I can say it as a collector myself, those vpets apps are so fucking basic despite having better graphics than a color display toy, with the exception of Pakka Pets which is heavily inspired by Tamagotchi, a much better Tamagotchi app than the actual official app I can say
Tamagotchi is still sold. In fact, they just made a new one. The Tamagotchi ON.
I STILL lie to myself from time to time, say I'll keep my tamagotchis alive this time, and put new batteries in before letting them die a day later. :X
I remember seeing the Cybiko in "Big Fat Liar". Maybe I'm mistaken on that.
Plus the "Video Now" in Agent Cody Bankes II. Was Frankie Munez sponsored?
damn i remember as a kid thinking the cybiko was some nasa level shit
OMG! I remember that Chat Now commercial from back in the day! Use to watch it in between commercial breaks on KidsWB while I tuned in for Pokemon.
For april fools (or not) just cover the TI 84, 84 CE, and NSpire and talk about their games
The 84CE and NSpire are way too new
People have done crazy things on the 84. I've seen ballistics simulators, and even black hole sims
the Nspire is a beast of a computer
Had a Cybiko as a kid! The only use I ever got out of it was the Christmas when I got it because my cousin also got one, so we chatted at my grandma's house. Otherwise, I never encountered another cybiko owner ever again. And yet, I'm still nostalgic whenever I see it get brought up.
2000s electronic gadgets were decent for play but not for messaging
Cybiko it was a bad Game Boy meets PDA until Nintendo DS and PSP defeated the kids handheld electronics
Oof I had a Firefly and this video gave me anti-nostalgia for my childhood
10/10 would recommend (the video not the damn phone)
matthew Riding I was so glad I did not have that and was glad my first phone was a flip phone.
@@FlintG Oh yeah that thing was a nightmare. My mom bought it and I had it for a few weeks, and then my dad felt so bad for me he bought me a flip phone. She was pissed but god it was a shitty move for her to buy that thing in the first place 😂
I had this odd purple thing that was exactly like that Hello Kitty one. I have no idea where I found the patience to type out words with that awful layout, and my confusion is worsened by the fact that I owned both of the communicators and only ever sent messages to myself.
I remember that one! I wanted one so bad when I was a kid
I had that too OMG it was literally so confusing to use LOLOL
First off, love the nostalgia trips seeing as how I grew up with damn near all of this, second is be VERY careful when letting Audible sponsor anything. In case you didn't read the disclaimer all the way through, for a company that sells audio books, you cannot show a book in a video, ANY BOOK, say the word book, basically if you describe the product or mention a certain series like Harry Potter, they'll terminate the deal. A friend of mine accidentally said the word book twice during their promotion of it and the next day they got a termination notice as well as a massive bill for their "trial" and book they got. Just letting you know so you can keep your head above water and keep making this amazing trips down memory lane.
11:29 wtf lmao
C. Babs hahaha I died at that
11:30 it is like d*ck
I feel like I'm one of the few people who actually really liked having a FireFly phone as a kid... 😂😅
I was still in elementary school when my family got my sister and I each one and I used to put it in my pocket on field trips in case I got lost or had an emergency. It was really useful during a time when most kids didn't have mobile phones at all, tbh!
The only thing I didn't like about it was that I was constantly afraid I was going to bump the 911 button on accident! 😂
Me: Mom can we get Giogio theme?
Mom: We'me have Giogio theme at hœm
Giogio theme at home: 11:12
Hœ
I ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE, THEY LOOKED SO COOL!
When I was kid, around the time spy toys were getting big, me and my cousin convinced our parents to buy us these watches that had a little keyboard, and could transmit messages remotely. In theory.. In practice we pretty much had to have them touching for anything to transmit. Had a quick google, but can't find them at all.
I remember finding a Firefly on sale at target during a road trip with my mom. She bought it for me but when we got home my dad refused to pay to set up the line bc he was so cheap so I could never use it as an actual phone and I have no idea what happened to it ;^;
Keep these types of vids coming. it's so nostalgic, and educational to see what it was like in the early and mid 2000s. Awesome work :D
for some reason youtube is literally refusing to let me watch this past a certain point near the end of the video lmao
Same
NASA shut em down
Me too!
Weird, same here
My dad discovered the Cybiko when I was a kid and bought loads of them on eBay to tinker with, because they could be had dirt cheap back then. This would’ve been within a few years of their commercial failure, so there were a ton of them in circulation new in the box. I think we’ve still got a bin full of them back home somewhere.
I had one, my brother had one, we gave them out to friends since we had so many. They were great. I remember some truly wild and profane text chat shenanigans on the school bus.
We had a CD-R (also from eBay, I think) filled with hundreds of programs and games for them. You could fit that many on a CD-R because everything to do with these things was minuscule in size - the internal memory was less than 1MB, but I think Lost in Labyrinth, the FPS featured briefly in the video, was one of the heftier programs at about 50KB.
There were some great games too - plenty were nothing special, but some of them (like Labyrinth) had some great pseudo-3D graphics, and even many of the others looked pretty good, and that was on a 160x100 monochrome display with 2-bit “color.” They got a lot out of the limited sound capabilities too - some of these games had great sound design and even music; I remember Lost in Labyrinth featuring a real banger. They seem to have treated that one as a AAA title, which makes sense since it came preinstalled on the Cybiko - if I remember correctly, there’s a dedicated button along the top that runs it.
That’s a lot of ranting to say that I remember these weird little things really fondly, and it’s always great to see them popping up places.
Vintage computer nerds: “it’s a serial cable dude”.
When they were talking on those weird walkie talkie phones, it sounded like the voice commands in Counter-Strike Source.
i love this channel its just all about all the shit i saw on tv back in the day that my parents were never cool enough to buy me
I was born in '92 and this is all new to me, everyone I knew had a mobile by year 4 or 5, so around 9 or 10 years old. And after school we would text each other, or use the landline to talk, or use MSN messenger. If we ever saw a kid with one of these toy phones I'm sure we would have picked on them mercilessly.
8:18 "...the only way you could connect is by plugging in with a VGA cable."
so.... we're gonna just speed past that like it isn't important, then.
a **serial cable**, maybe?
It looks like a vga lol
bless you billi man for covering every aspect of my childhood and making me forget my awful life decisions instead
"Step off, ninja mom" awoke memories deep inside me. Damn.
I remember begging my mom for a ChatNow, and both I and my best friend got one. I think we messaged eachother all of a small handful of times.
I've since lost it to time and relocation but it'll always be tucked into my memory as something neat and fun to me.
The affordable smartphone killed all the other portable gadgets off.
If I cant play Giorno’s theme on the Music Composer of my PDA I don’t want it 😠✨ PERIODT
8:17
It's not a VGA cable. VGA is only used for video signals. It's a DB9 or rs232 serial cable. It's missing a row of pins for VGA.
I love that the ladybug from the wimpy kid books is real and it’s called the firefly
"Jeralt of Riviera"
XD
Toss a coin to your knock-off
It was a dark time for Byleth's dad
Oh the Cybiko. I had 1, or 3. Two regulars, one I still have to this day. Same color as yours. The other I got in 1999. Then I got the extreme too. You could go truly wireless and get email and browse the web. Albeit required another Cybiko, a Serial link cable and a PC. It’s range was abysmal. But I recall on my trips to Nashville TN as a kid trying to discover other Cybiko users. There were never any. But I loved the open games and apps. Yes, those gum stick batteries die, and corrode. Mine did. Mine didn’t work when it was new that well. Also the charging port would break off. Young me didn’t know how to solder, so I used tape to pad the connector back to the board. It looked awesome for its time though.
omg i never had one of these but it would be fun to take it apart!
and by one of these i mean the cybiko
Looks like you had slot of fun Billiam and that's what I enjoy about your videos. Keep having fun for us!
The early 2000’s were a very strange but amazing time (except for 9/11, that sucked) Over.
I was OBSESSED with my cousins handheld IM thing that reminded me of a sidekick. It was only for IM though and I think you had to be logged in on her computer still to use it around her house LOL
I kinda still wish there was stuff like this targeted to kids under 13. Parents these days expect technology to raise their kids. You also sometimes see children who don’t know any better posting borderline sexual content on social media free for grown adult strangers to see.
I feel like if there were social toys for kids (with much better technology) that could teach them how to use smart devices while also having restrictions that don’t give them full access to the internet, they might be a better alternative than letting young kids do whatever they want on social media or sheltering them from it entirely.
But alas, I think the smart device craze is too huge for these toys to ever make a comeback. I just hope parents can start being smarter about how much time they let their little kids spend on the internet and what apps/sites they use, while also not being too sheltering.
The cybiko could relay through more than 200 units using an early form of mesh networking. Also, a Cybiko connected to a computer could act as an access point between the host computer's internet connection and other cybiko's in the network.. The software part of the business continued to make cellphone games long after the actual communicators ceased production.
The Cybiko Xtreme was also usable as a digital walky-talky.
With the recent news of the Tiger handhelds making a "comeback" - I wonder if any of these things will see a resurgence. Everything old is new again!
Lol I wanted like half of these as a kid!!
Ended up living with the pictochat from the DS
I just want to say in the Kim Possible theme is says "Call me, beep me if you want to reach me" so beepers were not the only way to reach her 0:25
I choose to interpret the lyrics as “Call me- BEEP ME- if you want to reach me” as if she was correcting herself. That’s the great thing about art. I’ll interpret it how I want just to make a joke in a UA-cam video work
This reminds me of when I was little and would stand at my window with my DS, with either pictochat or mario multiplayer open to the "searching" status, thinking that maybe someone else would play with me. I live on a 200 acre ranch, no one ever came for reasons that are obvious now lmao.
I already know this is gonna be good
I had a firefly. My mother was a paramedic and was at work a lot, so she gave us a firefly for emergencies. I was in charge of the firefly and my sister was in charge of the pepper spray. We wore both around our necks the entire time she was out lol
Hey Billiam, I love your videos and especially the ones on monster collectors! I was wondering if you could do an episode on Dinosaur King? It doesn’t get much coverage but it was definitely part of a ton of childhoods, including mine! All I remember was the card game, but apparently the anime is on Netflix!
Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see what you do ^^
Yeah that show was cool, it even had an arcade machine that I once saw in the wild. I think it was a weird rock paper scissors deal.
CrAzYgIrL Yeah exactly! That’s what I remember. It was everywhere where I live. We always traded cards during soccer practice, and I thought I was the coolest with the T-Rex, but looking back I have a feeling it wasn’t the best card
Does anyone else remember the device that allowed you to text a message and save it to a little charms? The gimmick was you could pass the charms to your friends so they could read them between classes. The charms could be worn as jewelry even? I think? I feel like it was by the same people that made that voice-activated diary.
yep
I need to see you and Ashens find a way to message each other with the Cybikosince you 2 are probably the only ones on the planet with one.
For complicated reasons, the license-free frequencies in the UK and in Europe are not the same. Not compatible.
Supposed to be anyway. In practice lots of tourists going one way or the other bring radios with them (Don't bring the family to a major theme park without a way to keep in contact if the kids wander off!), so unintentional infringement is commonplace.
I had a purple version of the hello kitty contraption. And I would have never remembered if I hadn’t had watched this video. I completely forgot my sister and I ever had them
SAME
Cybiko was meant for tweens but advertised " Make Sexy Chat" on the box, above a picture of a young Asian girl. No words.
I had the video camera that you showed at the beginning. I made a recreation of lost with that movie when I was like 10. My little sister had the hello kitty tester things and it took FOREVER for us to figure them out. Technology has changed
It is not a vga cable but a serial cable the same stuff that is on the data pins of a usb cable, so you can get an adapter and connect it to a modern pc.
The chat now advertisements had them taking pictures in color, but they took pics in black and white, witch as a kid I had felt lied to when I found this out after my brother got them.
Hey Billiam can you please cover the Megaman series of games and shows of the early 2000's.
Megaman Battle Network is a lit series.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 fun fact there could have been a Megaman ZX series if they didn't decide on Starforce.
@@barrybend7189 Cool. But tbh the only Megaman games I have enjoyed are the Battle Network ones, but I haven't tried Star Force.
@@haruhirogrimgar6047 ok lets hope after the Legends Collection we get a Battle Network/Starforce collection next.
@@barrybend7189 That would definitely be nice. I have had to emulate the Battle Network series on PC since it feels impossible to play on a phone.
Did anyone else notice the adult joke at 11:30? He literally got her number and his "wilted" antenna immediately sprung with he give a sly look to the camera...
Most of toy media devices have more buttons than most apps on a smart devices.
Me and my friend got matching winx themed text things? I honestly think it’s super cute but it literally never worked right. I still have it in my room as a cute decoration.
Time for the semi annual power rangers reminder at this point it’s more of an in joke between me and my friends but still ps good vid
Oh my God, I remember we had two of those Chat Nows and we legit got them for when my sister and I accompanied Mum with grocery shopping, in case we got lost
I loved them
Can you talk about the vtech mobigo, it’s a early 2010’s toy for learning and I used to play this when I was younger (I’m now 10 and still have it)
Along with that maybe he could talk about the leapster and other kids learning/game/whatever devices since i dont think he's done a video on those before.
10:56 LMAOO the way u drank it 😂😭
The fact that u drank outta the tiny mug was very funny.
Please cover Mew Mew Power. With the Tokyo mew mew "return" (reboot), I'd like to learn how trash the old dub was.
UNDERTALE
Abby Collins I watched the old dub as a kid. The voice acting wasn’t terrible but they westernised all the girls names (Strawberry Mew was named ZOE for some reason) etc.
Didn't they call it Hollywood Mew mew? Probably fucking ADV films. Shit company
@@CaptainMotocycle Where I'm from, they called it Mew Mew Power.
@@CaptainMotocycle 4kids made a dub called Mew Mew Power.
1:42 this awakened a deep slumbering memory within my brain that I didn't even know was there
i remember in fourth gtade wjen we got to take charter busses to the state capital, and on the form aboit the trip, it saod that pictochat wasn't allowed. Those were the days...
I never would hi old have remembered having a cybiko without this video
11:12 you look so tired with everything in life
I LOVED sms text messengers and only recently got rid of the ones I had. I loved them, I had the hello kitty ones, and I only got rid of them because none of my friends ever used them with me. The fun thing though was that in addition to the hello kitty ones I also had another set that also used infrared transmission so you could cross over the different messenger devices no problem. The other set I had looked more like the smartphones we see today, they were still making them into the early 2000s when I was a kid. man I hope I can get some one day and find a use for them, I loved the idea I just never had anyone who wanted to use them with me.
"Go to audible dot com slash (sponsor)"
Okay that makes sense.
"or text this to (random ass phone number)"
Wow, that's still a thing?
I had the hello Kitty one lmao you really brought back memories 😂💀💀
I dreamed my phone turned into a Cybiko. Congrats Billiam, your videos have caused at least one cybiko related nightmare.
Oh my god I BEGGED for a firefly back in the day...
OMG I LOVE THIS !! , I remember posting a comment on another video about you reviewing stuff like the chat now and you did a video on it . Thank you so much man :)
I love this 2000s toy analysis, it truly was a unique time for kids stuff!
I was getting serious Red vs Blue Griff and Simmons vibes while you guys were talking with the walkie talkie things!!
I used to beg my mum for the hello kitty messenger thing all the time as a kid damn the nostalgia rush
I never had any friends as a kid (or at the very least none that lived directly nextdoor to me), so these devices would've been useless to me.
Sidenote, is anyone else bothered when TV shows and movies show kids with walkie talkies that can communicate across town? They even did this in Stranger Things, this trope isn't dead yet!
I had the pink VideoNow. I got it a market and would stay up late at night watching Spongebob and That's so Raven under my blankets. It was magical to me. 😂