This goes beyond novelty for me, you wouldn't think it but it does add the performance element you miss from just listening to music. Obviously it's simplistic looking and sounding but there's something about it.
Bandai missed a trick by not doing a licensed version with The Muppets. This would be brilliant with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem plus Rowlf on piano!
I'm a long-time Little Jammer fan from Japan! I'm very happy to have these products introduced on a channel with many subscribers like you! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask 👍🏻
@@AbrahamLure You can only play songs recorded on a cartridge (sold separately). There are many types of cartridges such as jazz, rock, ballad, bossa nova, etc.
This guy has panache and interest in quirky electronics, but hobbyist levels of knowledge or beyond which makes the videos interesting and informative. Honestly I wish schools would show videos like this to students over boring them and having them get C or D grades. At least here you'd be growing a desire to learn and expand your mind, which really is something important to all human happiness. For me personally, in my 30s, it's places like that this keep my hunger to keep learning and exploring alive.
The first thing I noticed was that the cartridges seem to be identical to the ones used with the WonderSwan. A Bandai produced handheld game console first released in Japan in 1999. The console was created by Gunpei Yokoi (creator of the GameBoy) after he left Nintendo.
Agh, you beat me to it. I noticed it as well. The SwanCrystal had been discontinued by the time this thing came out. My guess is that Bandai was trying to recoup some of their losses by reusing old tooling, not unlike how the Atari Jaguar molds ended up being reused for that dental camera.
BanDai liked to use carts like this for things like this, and often that means the device under the hood is an actual wonderswan too, the Benesse Pocket challenge systems use a Very Similar Cartridge, maybe this is an undercover WonderSwan as well!
The Little Jammer Pro (with singer and horn section) is featured in Squid Game during the Red Light Green Light sequence! It always struck me as odd that they had created a little figurine band to play "Fly me to the Moon" in the show, but it makes way more sense to know that it was an actual product!
I KNEW IT! Ever since I saw a Little Jammer set in action in Kyoto twn years ago, I was completely sure id see it on Techmoan some day. It's an incredible product whose mere existence feels like a fever dream. They had an idea and made it happen! The set at the hotel had at least 10 pieces, and there was a female singer. They looked and sounded amazing! The front desk man told me they had already been in service for nearly 20 years. Bravo Matt for showcasing yet another fantastic piece of equipment that many don't even dream existed!
It’s one of the things I like about Japan, it’s not all that weird for adults to enjoy toys there. My bus driver on a trip in Japan had his driver’s portion of the bus covered in Sanrio plushies and stickers and it wasn’t an uncommon sight.
It’s actually an observation that goes back to the 1800s. An early British visitor to Japan noted even adult men being taken by children’s toys (I’m assuming stuff like kendama). Japan has always been known for making toys and they were one of the things that helped to recover their economy after WWII. Combine that with their craftsperson culture and you get some very detailed toys made with love, like the jammer band. I think it’s also why Japanese culture is so well known for its playfulness.
16:16 Omg, this figure made me realize this thing was used in Squid Game. Not sure if you allow links in comments, but i found a clip of it by just looking up "Squid game fly me to the moon moment"
These videos have tremendous editing, video and audio quality. While not all content is as well produced on this platform I'm still excited to see that interesting topics and quality narration exist here. When I was a kid a show like Techmoan's couldn't exist, and while YT has its issues I'm still glad it exists so I can learn about all this interesting stuff from chaps like Techmoan!
Really impressed with the animations - both the choice and execution of each tiny move as well as the timing to the music is really impressive. For once, something that looks like a labour of love rather than a made to a budget gimmick. Thank you for sharing the video!
Do you know what's inside the cartridge? I'm asking because if it's playing around 8bit midi "files", maybe tere is a way to create an own set of music that could later be ... "arranged by the band" 😂
That was my first thought. There's a precedent for re-using wonderswan cartridges too- the benessi pocket challenge educational console was basically a wonderswan in a different shell. Considering the wonderswan was discontinued in 2003, I wouldn't be half surprised if they shared some hardware.
Look mum no computer could do so much with this. A Matt and Sam collaboration could make new characters and instruments even work out how to make new music files to suit what a challenge. I think I could be a fan as well how had I not seen this before. As alway brilliant Matt.
As a kid, we used to have a little drummer boy Christmas automaton. I remember stopping once and noticing it was playing in time with the drums in the music and thinking "huwh! it's not just shaking randomly. there's programming happening in this". Anyway, this was cute. Makes me miss your puppet vids.
I love your joy mat! Thanks for sharing the things that interest you. I got my Sony srf-39fp because of you and dug up my sharp boom box at my dad's place because of the rarity in quality nowadays. Keep pumping out great content!
This has a similar vibe to those old Disney World animatronics - very imaginative and tons of personality in each of the guys - especially the "One - two - three - OW!" 🤣 i love it.
What an awesome set! Had no idea they existed, and I'm pretty sure I heard a few bars of Layla in there too 😀 Also as a chap in his 40's who like building Lego, adults are allowed toys too 😄
I never tire of "OOOHhhhhh YEahhh, ThAts It... Taaake it Oooff" I can't be the only one who'd enjoy watching a compilation of just these segments from over the years. With the audio track looped in the background; naturally. Come on Matt, give the naysayers something else to complain about; as if they haven't enough. Great content, been watching this channel for ages now, always entertaining and/or informative.
this is so cute! a wonderful use of MIDI-type music formats, which sound very mundane when listened to on their own but the fact that it's decoding a series of individual notes means you can use it to synchronize stuff to music very easily. i wonder if someone dedicated could make custom music carts for these!
The series looks adorable and charming. There seems to be a lot of potential for licensing. I guess I would love to have seen a little Van Halen series with EVH doing two handed tapping and little David Lee Roth doing high kicks.
A KISS version would probably sell out in an hour, not only does KISS have a fanatical following, the primary KISS fan age demographic both has money and likes knicknacks.
Would be interesting if it would be possible for people to somehow reverse engineer the coding to allow for custom songs with appropriate movement timing. I wanna see these guys vibe to DragonForce hehe
Max Weinberg 7 from Late Night with Conan O’Brien Runaway 5 from Earthbound/Mother 2 Any three-, four-, or five-piece rock band with cartridges playing their hits The possibilities are endless
This is ridiculous but also adorable. I love those little guys. The detail is spectacular and also I like the art style, how they look like clay figures.
I’m surprised when they discontinued it they didn’t release some sort of method to create your own arrangements and movements for the band members. It would’ve encroached a bit on the market for cartridges, but it seems like something that the target market would’ve loved
Just want to comment that i actually completely look forward to the Pro edition update. This little set, barring price, turned out far far more charming than i ever expected
Mat, it’s great to see you so pleased with a product. I can see the joy on your face and hear it in your voice. And what a cool little thing it is too.
After watching your video, i just bought a used Rhythm Jam set. it was affordable and is very fun. My guitar player and bass player has lost some articulation, but the piano player and the drummer is where the fun is!
Another product I've never seen or heard of, I agree with you there is something rather charming about these speaker musicians. Reminds me of the full size versions the demented Doctor Phibes (Vincent Price) had in the classic film "The Abominable Doctor Phibes".
this thing is so silly and so endearing, it had me grinning and giggling like an idiot. I would really enjoy having one around! didn't expect the prices, though!!
As a product it's really niche and seems like it could have only happened in 90s-00s Japan but it ended up being a lot more adorable than I was expecting and would go great at Christmas time with the right music cart, I was thinking the same thing when you mentioned the little Christmas villages. Too bad this a 20 year old salaryman toy rather than a toy fad from a few years ago, there's probably not enough of them in circulation for someone to have reverse engineered the cart format to enable loading custom music, but Rick Astley is big in Japan so maybe one of the other factory carts has a rickroll on it.
What a cool little set, honestly at the start of the video I was thinking what toss, but by then end it has likewise won me over! The attention to detail is amazing. I can't wait to see the pro as the one thing I was thinking was it's a shame about the some of the choppy midi sounds.
To be honest, it is up to us, adults, to normalize this kind of fun. I, personally, stopped giving a crap a while ago, and if something brings me joy, it brings me joy, end of story. I do not let anyone yuck my yum. But, lately I think, things are starting to change, you can see people collecting figurines, plushies, even the Lego franchise is much more directed at adults, these days.
it seems like a western thing that once you become an adult you can't use toys anymore unless it's for collecting only, where they live in the box forever never to be used, in japan it seems to be normal, there are tons scenes of people that get dolls, trains, mechas, planes, etc, even if those communities are a small market (comparatively speakinng) they dump huge amounts of money into their hobby, closest proxy i can think of is the warcraft community painting their little figurines.
7:15 it's hilarious watching this band play! Obviously they did put quite some effort into aligning the music with the "musicians" movements. Thx a lot for sharing, beautiful 👍😊! Edit: Did I see you smile just a minute later 🫣🤣?! Like I said: Beautiful!
Thanks for the video, enjoyable as always! Speaking of the impending marketing season, the movement of those figures sure reminds me of the Mr. Christmas "Santa's Marching Band". Eight figures standing on servomotors that rotate left or right in time to strike notes on tuned bells. Since it's all hardwired with twisted a pair of conductors going from a control module to each figure, it is a real mess to set up or even store neatly. Oh, and no volume control, just the sweet serenade of piercing bells and noisy plastic geared servomotors to define the appropriate holiday mood.
We had this and it was always fun! One of the elves developed an issue with his gearbox and would always flub his solo in Joy to the World but that sorta added to the charm.
Hallmark also had a set of Christmas animatronic figurines that would synch together to play like a mini orchestra. I believe they were Peanuts characters. I thought the Hallmark sets were expensive at $200 but are a bargain compared to these sets.
PS. I immediately thought of the puppet bands that played in Thunderbirds... I went to look and refresh the memory. 'Alan's dream from Thunderbirds Are Go' as a search term will get you puppet Hank Marvin and really the most perfect little Shadows jammers in history complete with puppet Vox amplification.
Glad to see you picked one up to do a video on it. I had not heard of these until looking for other items on Japanese auction sites, and now I have too many! I only recently got an extra set running at a model train show, and it got a LOT of interest. I would like to analyze the data, but it would be a lot of work to do your own, or even try to make a spare cartridge. Reproducing the cartridges would involve royalty payments, etc. But it could be worthwhile on the rare club-only cartridges, since they sell for hundreds of dollars. I play in jazz groups like this, so I find the music very well done. A lot of work went into these systems!!
I know it would be difficult to read the files off the cartridge, but I wonder what the format of the music is, and if you could feed that format in to either the data in or audio in inputs? And have to agree with a muppets version as suggested in other comments.
You put an enormous big smile on my face with this video 🙂 One would never had thought on somwthing like this existing far beyond being a little gimmick. So mant thanks for brightening my day :-) Love it!
You mentioned music boxes; in a way it's also like a modern take on the old German and Swiss clocks with the elaborate mechanical figures coming out to play tunes on the hour. (The fact there's an alarm built-it makes it even more-so.) Of course, those old clocks are also worth a fortune and are very cherished, despite arguably being just as whimsical and unnecessary.
I keep finding other fans of the series in the weirdest places. Anyway, if you're into games, you would probably be interested to hear that the music carts for this thing are actually reused from Bandai's attempt to compete with the Game Boy: the WonderSwan. It had been discontinued a couple years earlier, so I guess Bandai was trying to recoup some of their losses by reusing the tooling.
An "item of momentary delight", ideal for an area that will be passed through such as a hotel foyer or a shop display. I can imagine the delight would fade very quickly.
Thanks for showing it, my Honey and I got a laugh watching it ourselves. I've never seen it in such detail and showcased so well, which I really appreciate it. Great upload, the interpretations of the songs are hilarious also, and add to the nostalgia. Lots of work and Love put into that unit.
I love animatronic music things like this. Years ago my mother in law gave us a set of Peanuts Christmas figurines from Hallmark. They are also animatronic musicians, and they play various Christmas tunes, with each of the Peanuts characters playing a different instrument. The cool thing about the set that I have is that the different pieces communicate with each other wirelessly, so there's no wires whatsoever. And the song will dynamically rearrange itself depending on which instruments are available. So if you have only 3 out of the (iirc it was a set of 4) instruments, the song will still sound reasonably correct, minus the missing instrument. I always look forward to Christmastime every year when I can unpack these guys and watch (and hear) them play.
I'm in the slow process of self-learning puppetry and THIS is a true inspiration! I'm going to try and invent a simpler system for use with my mini-dino puppet singing group: What i have right now are all lever- controlled manually operated mini- puppets which I think can be converted to a Bluetooth controlled system.
There was a Christmas version planned that was advertised but as far as anyone can tell it never got released. Likely because Japan does Christmas differently.
I'm very curious to see Wade from DankPods' opinion on this thing. This seems like his jam. Also, what I wouldn't give for a modern version of this, still with the cables so we can enjoy it for longer. But _especially_ if it gets licensed music and likenesses from Century Media, Earache, Nuclear Blast, Napalm, Relapse, and so on. Just... imagine the potential!
15:28 came to this video after watching season 2 of squid game and the main game master guy sat down and played fly me to the moon on this device and I had to find out more and now I have ty
My first thought was maybe possibly you could replicate this with 3D printing and an arduino or raspberry pi? It wouldn't be simple or cheap but it would be a fun project.
I have always dreamed of starting a soda parlor-esq store with a magic and fantasy theme. In the corner would be a band of gnomes playing music. This reignites that dream so much.
If you got the songs from Clone Hero you have the tracks already separated and with a note chart file you could use as a starting point for the performance
At first I thought well, this is a bit silly isn't it? It's neat, but it sure does look like a lot of time and effort designing something that really isn't very... then 7:18 happened and I immediately understood. Wow. This is wonderful. Seeing them in motion with the music really helps you "get it", all you have to do is let yourself get a little immersed and it's magical. I found myself thinking "Man, these guys are really killing it!" And they're just little animatronics! Hahaha. Thank you for sharing this!!!
A huge thankyou for all of your videos Mat. Most people probably don't appreciate quite the amount of time, effort, and skill that is needed to make videos like these, but I do, and I look forward to every one of them.
I kinda want to see a plastic reenactment of "Whiplash". Maybe the "Guest" port can be used to animate an injection-moulded J.K. Simmons throwing a chair.
It's like having a little slice of The House on the Rock on one's desk. Things can be silly and cool at the same time, and I think this fits that bill just fine.
12:17 - It's his actual _hat_ moving for the hi-hat _cymbal_ parts... adorable.
This goes beyond novelty for me, you wouldn't think it but it does add the performance element you miss from just listening to music. Obviously it's simplistic looking and sounding but there's something about it.
Bandai missed a trick by not doing a licensed version with The Muppets. This would be brilliant with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem plus Rowlf on piano!
I would like a Bobby Benson's Baby Band version! 😂
Omg imagine the sales, I want one now too.
Muppets version? Got to have Animal on the drums!!!!!
Mna mna
Movin' right along (doobie doo, doobie doo)
I'm a long-time Little Jammer fan from Japan! I'm very happy to have these products introduced on a channel with many subscribers like you! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask 👍🏻
Can you set it up to play whatever songs/instruments you want?
@@AbrahamLure You can only play songs recorded on a cartridge (sold separately). There are many types of cartridges such as jazz, rock, ballad, bossa nova, etc.
Can woman singer sing as a man?
@@kirylsuvorau3930 Sadly, there is no cartridge which recorded male voice🥲
However, so many songs are well-represented without vocals.
@@ああ-q6m3p Is there a good list of all the songs somewhere? What to search for?
What a neat product. Once again, you've introduced me to something cool that I didn't know existed. Thank you, Mat!
i agree there are loads of products that are mental but ive never come across them myself... i seem to be out the loop
This guy has panache and interest in quirky electronics, but hobbyist levels of knowledge or beyond which makes the videos interesting and informative.
Honestly I wish schools would show videos like this to students over boring them and having them get C or D grades. At least here you'd be growing a desire to learn and expand your mind, which really is something important to all human happiness. For me personally, in my 30s, it's places like that this keep my hunger to keep learning and exploring alive.
I've played in bands for decades. These dudes have better timing than many I have known over the years!! 🙂
Maybe the bass players need a midi controller in their bum too! ;)
(Bass player here)
I want a drummer whose hat bounces on the high hat.
@@ToTheGAMES 12:00 even the electronically controlled bassist seems to have some trouble keeping exact time.
what's the difference between a foot-spa and a drummer ?? a foot-spa bucks up the feet, ................
I know, these guys are absolute machines.
2:45 the peeling music always gets a laugh from me!
Arguably the coolest bit of kit you’ve had on the channel in some time. Absolutely love this.
The first thing I noticed was that the cartridges seem to be identical to the ones used with the WonderSwan. A Bandai produced handheld game console first released in Japan in 1999. The console was created by Gunpei Yokoi (creator of the GameBoy) after he left Nintendo.
Yeah, I have a Wonderswan and that was the first thing I recognized. Good spot.
Agh, you beat me to it. I noticed it as well.
The SwanCrystal had been discontinued by the time this thing came out. My guess is that Bandai was trying to recoup some of their losses by reusing old tooling, not unlike how the Atari Jaguar molds ended up being reused for that dental camera.
BanDai liked to use carts like this for things like this, and often that means the device under the hood is an actual wonderswan too, the Benesse Pocket challenge systems use a Very Similar Cartridge, maybe this is an undercover WonderSwan as well!
Yeah, same here. The first thing I noticed as well.
Was just about to post the same. Wonder is the hardware related
The Little Jammer Pro (with singer and horn section) is featured in Squid Game during the Red Light Green Light sequence! It always struck me as odd that they had created a little figurine band to play "Fly me to the Moon" in the show, but it makes way more sense to know that it was an actual product!
Ohhhhh! Watching this I was thinking "Didn't he already do a video on this? I SWEAR I've seen these before." That's exactly where. =o)
yessss!! thank you. i was trying to remember where i had seen it, and i only saw it a couple weeks ago.
Was looking for a squid game comment!!
Japan like, really likes Fly Me To The Moon, dude. It keeps coming up in Japanese media I watch. Is it literally all Eva's fault?
I KNEW IT! Ever since I saw a Little Jammer set in action in Kyoto twn years ago, I was completely sure id see it on Techmoan some day. It's an incredible product whose mere existence feels like a fever dream. They had an idea and made it happen!
The set at the hotel had at least 10 pieces, and there was a female singer. They looked and sounded amazing! The front desk man told me they had already been in service for nearly 20 years.
Bravo Matt for showcasing yet another fantastic piece of equipment that many don't even dream existed!
the fact that it reached 20 years of continous use really sells the durability/quality of the device
i would imagine there would be different price range of the product , so some are probably better than other.
That is really far cooler than I expected it to be. Would be hilarious to see a hair band version of this. Thanks for another interesting video.
I made a similar comment! Imagine the various musician characters headbanging in time to the music! Would be so much fun!😂I'd buy it!
It’s one of the things I like about Japan, it’s not all that weird for adults to enjoy toys there. My bus driver on a trip in Japan had his driver’s portion of the bus covered in Sanrio plushies and stickers and it wasn’t an uncommon sight.
That's extremely heartwarming!
It’s actually an observation that goes back to the 1800s. An early British visitor to Japan noted even adult men being taken by children’s toys (I’m assuming stuff like kendama). Japan has always been known for making toys and they were one of the things that helped to recover their economy after WWII. Combine that with their craftsperson culture and you get some very detailed toys made with love, like the jammer band. I think it’s also why Japanese culture is so well known for its playfulness.
Someone suggested a Muppets version of this product, I now *strongly* desire to see you roll the puppets out to do a bit of an impersonation
Animal on the drums would be something else!!🤣🤣
COPPA: Nope.
(Demonetizes your Video)
Surprisingly cute and detailed animation. They really got a lot of character into the performances.
16:16 Omg, this figure made me realize this thing was used in Squid Game.
Not sure if you allow links in comments, but i found a clip of it by just looking up "Squid game fly me to the moon moment"
These videos have tremendous editing, video and audio quality. While not all content is as well produced on this platform I'm still excited to see that interesting topics and quality narration exist here. When I was a kid a show like Techmoan's couldn't exist, and while YT has its issues I'm still glad it exists so I can learn about all this interesting stuff from chaps like Techmoan!
Really impressed with the animations - both the choice and execution of each tiny move as well as the timing to the music is really impressive. For once, something that looks like a labour of love rather than a made to a budget gimmick. Thank you for sharing the video!
You still see these occasionally in cafes, bars and shops here in Japan.
There is a key cutting shop near me with the Peanuts version in the window.
The cartridge resemble a lot the ones used for the Wonderswan series of game console, also manufactured by Bandai.
Oh ho ho ho no! Patented Jammer cartridges, old family recipe!
Do you know what's inside the cartridge?
I'm asking because if it's playing around 8bit midi "files", maybe tere is a way to create an own set of music that could later be ... "arranged by the band" 😂
That was my first thought. There's a precedent for re-using wonderswan cartridges too- the benessi pocket challenge educational console was basically a wonderswan in a different shell. Considering the wonderswan was discontinued in 2003, I wouldn't be half surprised if they shared some hardware.
2:36 - How can people say the peeling plastic bit is stupid? I'm happy for each video that has a peeling plastic bit.
Ooh yeah...
Nothing wrong with a bit of peel porn ! my favourite part when i unbox an item is the new plastic peel 😊
Those people have no joy in existence.
Oh yeah...
Totally agree! It's just a bit of fun and it's also a bit of a Techmoan trade mark. Ignore the whingers.
@@GeoffCollinsTravelsfortheHoff I miss the Ooh yeah when other channels remove the plastic.
Who's so dull that thinks peeling off the protector film is stupid, i for one love it, glad you're not stopping.
Look mum no computer could do so much with this. A Matt and Sam collaboration could make new characters and instruments even work out how to make new music files to suit what a challenge. I think I could be a fan as well how had I not seen this before.
As alway brilliant Matt.
The frantic energy of look mum and the laid backness of techmoan? It might mix but I'm not sure.
As a kid, we used to have a little drummer boy Christmas automaton. I remember stopping once and noticing it was playing in time with the drums in the music and thinking "huwh! it's not just shaking randomly. there's programming happening in this". Anyway, this was cute. Makes me miss your puppet vids.
> Makes me miss your puppet vids.
So much.
Very cool. Clearly the people who worked on it know a lot about animation, character design and music.
I, for one, love the plastic peeling music. Gives me a good chuckle every time. Thanks and keep up the great work. Much appreciated.
I love your joy mat! Thanks for sharing the things that interest you. I got my Sony srf-39fp because of you and dug up my sharp boom box at my dad's place because of the rarity in quality nowadays. Keep pumping out great content!
@@thenutsonyourchin yeah Techmoan did a segment on prison tech. That's how I found out about it.
This has a similar vibe to those old Disney World animatronics - very imaginative and tons of personality in each of the guys - especially the "One - two - three - OW!" 🤣 i love it.
What an awesome set!
Had no idea they existed, and I'm pretty sure I heard a few bars of Layla in there too 😀
Also as a chap in his 40's who like building Lego, adults are allowed toys too 😄
Yes, I heard that bit of Layla too.
e.g model railways...
I'm 53, I play video games every day.
@@Safetytrousers So do I, and I'm 70
I agree with you, they seem to grow on you. Some nice filming there. 07:20 looks good. Nice review, thanks
I think the most out of place situation I saw a similar set of those was at a orthopedics’ clinic waiting room in Japan. I was fascinated by it.
I never tire of "OOOHhhhhh YEahhh, ThAts It... Taaake it Oooff" I can't be the only one who'd enjoy watching a compilation of just these segments from over the years. With the audio track looped in the background; naturally. Come on Matt, give the naysayers something else to complain about; as if they haven't enough. Great content, been watching this channel for ages now, always entertaining and/or informative.
this is so cute! a wonderful use of MIDI-type music formats, which sound very mundane when listened to on their own but the fact that it's decoding a series of individual notes means you can use it to synchronize stuff to music very easily. i wonder if someone dedicated could make custom music carts for these!
MIDI is in your DAW where it is used produce hits you hear on the radio 👍
12:20 love the drummer's high hat.
what a totally delightful product. Really brought a smile to my face with its whimsy. Awesome video, really love this type of content.
Thank you Matt for showing us unique products like this. Very entertaining as always.
The series looks adorable and charming.
There seems to be a lot of potential for licensing. I guess I would love to have seen a little Van Halen series with EVH doing two handed tapping and little David Lee Roth doing high kicks.
A KISS version would probably sell out in an hour, not only does KISS have a fanatical following, the primary KISS fan age demographic both has money and likes knicknacks.
Would be interesting if it would be possible for people to somehow reverse engineer the coding to allow for custom songs with appropriate movement timing. I wanna see these guys vibe to DragonForce hehe
I like it vanilla. Too many branded things out there it's refreshing to see something not advertising one thing or another.
that would be friggin Awesome! 😀👍
Max Weinberg 7 from Late Night with Conan O’Brien
Runaway 5 from Earthbound/Mother 2
Any three-, four-, or five-piece rock band with cartridges playing their hits
The possibilities are endless
This is ridiculous but also adorable. I love those little guys. The detail is spectacular and also I like the art style, how they look like clay figures.
That's amazing, and I have never heard of it before, it's basically multichannel in a weird way
I’m surprised when they discontinued it they didn’t release some sort of method to create your own arrangements and movements for the band members. It would’ve encroached a bit on the market for cartridges, but it seems like something that the target market would’ve loved
Quality of sound notwithstanding, I really like this. It really works and is very amusing and fun. Another great video.
Just want to comment that i actually completely look forward to the Pro edition update. This little set, barring price, turned out far far more charming than i ever expected
What a wonderfull novelty product!! I love it!! Thank you for bringing the "Little Jammer" series of products to our attention.
Those are adorable! Thank you for this video, sir. Made my morning!
Mat, it’s great to see you so pleased with a product. I can see the joy on your face and hear it in your voice. And what a cool little thing it is too.
After watching your video, i just bought a used Rhythm Jam set. it was affordable and is very fun. My guitar player and bass player has lost some articulation, but the piano player and the drummer is where the fun is!
Another product I've never seen or heard of, I agree with you there is something rather charming about these speaker musicians. Reminds me of the full size versions the demented Doctor Phibes (Vincent Price) had in the classic film "The Abominable Doctor Phibes".
this thing is so silly and so endearing, it had me grinning and giggling like an idiot. I would really enjoy having one around! didn't expect the prices, though!!
One of the coolest things I've seen in awhile, was really hoping there'd be a MIDI port when you showed the back :)
Really looking forward to your Little Jammer Pro video. This thing is pretty cool.
As a product it's really niche and seems like it could have only happened in 90s-00s Japan but it ended up being a lot more adorable than I was expecting and would go great at Christmas time with the right music cart, I was thinking the same thing when you mentioned the little Christmas villages. Too bad this a 20 year old salaryman toy rather than a toy fad from a few years ago, there's probably not enough of them in circulation for someone to have reverse engineered the cart format to enable loading custom music, but Rick Astley is big in Japan so maybe one of the other factory carts has a rickroll on it.
What a cool little set, honestly at the start of the video I was thinking what toss, but by then end it has likewise won me over! The attention to detail is amazing. I can't wait to see the pro as the one thing I was thinking was it's a shame about the some of the choppy midi sounds.
You're spot on with the comparison to Christmas villages. I really wish frivolities like these were more acceptable for adults.
To be honest, it is up to us, adults, to normalize this kind of fun. I, personally, stopped giving a crap a while ago, and if something brings me joy, it brings me joy, end of story. I do not let anyone yuck my yum. But, lately I think, things are starting to change, you can see people collecting figurines, plushies, even the Lego franchise is much more directed at adults, these days.
it seems like a western thing that once you become an adult you can't use toys anymore unless it's for collecting only, where they live in the box forever never to be used, in japan it seems to be normal, there are tons scenes of people that get dolls, trains, mechas, planes, etc, even if those communities are a small market (comparatively speakinng) they dump huge amounts of money into their hobby, closest proxy i can think of is the warcraft community painting their little figurines.
Who said they weren't? And who said you have to put the Christmas stuff away on December 26th?
Hey, woah - if they are, who gonna buy all those diamonds and cars?!
Honestly put some santa hats on these guys and put some Christmas music in it and it'd be the perfect thing for grandparents lmao
7:15 it's hilarious watching this band play! Obviously they did put quite some effort into aligning the music with the "musicians" movements. Thx a lot for sharing, beautiful 👍😊! Edit: Did I see you smile just a minute later 🫣🤣?! Like I said: Beautiful!
Thanks for the video, enjoyable as always! Speaking of the impending marketing season, the movement of those figures sure reminds me of the Mr. Christmas "Santa's Marching Band". Eight figures standing on servomotors that rotate left or right in time to strike notes on tuned bells. Since it's all hardwired with twisted a pair of conductors going from a control module to each figure, it is a real mess to set up or even store neatly. Oh, and no volume control, just the sweet serenade of piercing bells and noisy plastic geared servomotors to define the appropriate holiday mood.
We had this and it was always fun! One of the elves developed an issue with his gearbox and would always flub his solo in Joy to the World but that sorta added to the charm.
Hallmark also had a set of Christmas animatronic figurines that would synch together to play like a mini orchestra. I believe they were Peanuts characters. I thought the Hallmark sets were expensive at $200 but are a bargain compared to these sets.
6:46 the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman on Sax!
PS. I immediately thought of the puppet bands that played in Thunderbirds... I went to look and refresh the memory. 'Alan's dream from Thunderbirds Are Go' as a search term will get you puppet Hank Marvin and really the most perfect little Shadows jammers in history complete with puppet Vox amplification.
Glad to see you picked one up to do a video on it. I had not heard of these until looking for other items on Japanese auction sites, and now I have too many! I only recently got an extra set running at a model train show, and it got a LOT of interest. I would like to analyze the data, but it would be a lot of work to do your own, or even try to make a spare cartridge. Reproducing the cartridges would involve royalty payments, etc. But it could be worthwhile on the rare club-only cartridges, since they sell for hundreds of dollars. I play in jazz groups like this, so I find the music very well done. A lot of work went into these systems!!
I know it would be difficult to read the files off the cartridge, but I wonder what the format of the music is, and if you could feed that format in to either the data in or audio in inputs?
And have to agree with a muppets version as suggested in other comments.
Cool product you have brought techmoan
Very cool, I love it! I looked at eBay prices here in the USA, and, yeah, they are not cheap!
A Little Jammer Pro sold for $1,277.13, so the asking prices are not crazy.
@@markjames8664 Mate that's a full set of injectors for my truck. It's not like second mortgage money, but it's pretty crazy for a toy.
Thats awesome. I've always be fascinated with anything animatronics. Looking forward to seeing you video on the Pro. Good stuff.
Oooooh this was fantastic, can’t wait for the look at the pro version! Might have a whack at duplicating this with an Arduino myself…
Absolutely great little product, smile on my face all the way through that one. thanks for sharing.
Absolutely fabulous - made me laugh out loud - especially their renditions of Layla and Lady Madonna. So cool.
You put an enormous big smile on my face with this video 🙂 One would never had thought on somwthing like this existing far beyond being a little gimmick. So mant thanks for brightening my day :-) Love it!
Starting at about 02:44 in this video:
NEVER STOP doing that, Mat...🤭
oh man, when I noticed they were actually in beat with the music my heart melted! how cute!
You mentioned music boxes; in a way it's also like a modern take on the old German and Swiss clocks with the elaborate mechanical figures coming out to play tunes on the hour. (The fact there's an alarm built-it makes it even more-so.) Of course, those old clocks are also worth a fortune and are very cherished, despite arguably being just as whimsical and unnecessary.
It’s stuff like this that has drawn me to your channel for many years.
The demo song sounds like the band from ‘Earthbound’ on SNES - brilliant 👏
I keep finding other fans of the series in the weirdest places.
Anyway, if you're into games, you would probably be interested to hear that the music carts for this thing are actually reused from Bandai's attempt to compete with the Game Boy: the WonderSwan. It had been discontinued a couple years earlier, so I guess Bandai was trying to recoup some of their losses by reusing the tooling.
Wow. I wonder if any of these songs are what the "Runaway 5" did on the game "Earthbound" for the SNES.
I bought a limited edition of this, which lets you use three Billy Basses as backing singers and a Dancing Santa as lead.
I read 'dancing Satan' somehow
I initially saw dancing Sinatra!
Batteries good?
An "item of momentary delight", ideal for an area that will be passed through such as a hotel foyer or a shop display. I can imagine the delight would fade very quickly.
Your research work is admirable, so abundant and extensive, which could be seen from that various ad pics that you showed of almost all the versions❤
Thanks for showing it, my Honey and I got a laugh watching it ourselves.
I've never seen it in such detail and showcased so well, which I really appreciate it.
Great upload, the interpretations of the songs are hilarious also, and add to the nostalgia.
Lots of work and Love put into that unit.
I love animatronic music things like this. Years ago my mother in law gave us a set of Peanuts Christmas figurines from Hallmark. They are also animatronic musicians, and they play various Christmas tunes, with each of the Peanuts characters playing a different instrument. The cool thing about the set that I have is that the different pieces communicate with each other wirelessly, so there's no wires whatsoever. And the song will dynamically rearrange itself depending on which instruments are available. So if you have only 3 out of the (iirc it was a set of 4) instruments, the song will still sound reasonably correct, minus the missing instrument. I always look forward to Christmastime every year when I can unpack these guys and watch (and hear) them play.
My in laws have the Mickey Mouse characters playing instruments and it’s similarly delightful. The true next iteration of this idea.
Yes we love the hallmark set! Hold on tight to your Linus (trumpet) if you’ve got him!
I love appealing plastic and how are you embellish it it’s hilarious and satisfying. I love when your videos get quirky.
The close-up view of them playing really gave me some Earthbound/Mother 2 vibes!
I was surprised there’s no version from Mother!
One of the coolest things i've seen in a long long time ty so much
These are similar to the tiny jazz band robot players as seen in Squid Game.
I'm in the slow process of self-learning puppetry and THIS is a true inspiration! I'm going to try and invent a simpler system for use with my mini-dino puppet singing group: What i have right now are all lever- controlled manually operated mini- puppets which I think can be converted to a Bluetooth controlled system.
Man I wish there was a christmas version of this for me to be mesmerized by as a small child.
There was a Christmas version planned that was advertised but as far as anyone can tell it never got released. Likely because Japan does Christmas differently.
@@medes5597Weirdly Japan's biggest Christmas thing is eating KFC. How Japanese ;) Then again we all believe in a Coke branded fella with a beard.
I like how the redhead singer comes complete with a bouquet of roses on the stage.
I'm very curious to see Wade from DankPods' opinion on this thing. This seems like his jam.
Also, what I wouldn't give for a modern version of this, still with the cables so we can enjoy it for longer. But _especially_ if it gets licensed music and likenesses from Century Media, Earache, Nuclear Blast, Napalm, Relapse, and so on. Just... imagine the potential!
You forgot Season of Mist. I'd pay to hear Archspire songs on that thing
This video is so uplifting. So much fun, especially your reaction to being won over by it. Really intelligently made product
Back to this amazing video after Squid Games 2, episode 3. These things are gonna sky rocket in price!
just watching episode 3 and had to stop to check the comments here hahaha.
15:28 came to this video after watching season 2 of squid game and the main game master guy sat down and played fly me to the moon on this device and I had to find out more and now I have ty
I'm glad you bought the pro version, this is incredibly interesting to me and i can't wait to see what that one will be like.
My first thought was maybe possibly you could replicate this with 3D printing and an arduino or raspberry pi? It wouldn't be simple or cheap but it would be a fun project.
I have always dreamed of starting a soda parlor-esq store with a magic and fantasy theme. In the corner would be a band of gnomes playing music. This reignites that dream so much.
If you got the songs from Clone Hero you have the tracks already separated and with a note chart file you could use as a starting point for the performance
That's really cool. Worth the wait! Great video.
I'd love to see what Look Mum No Computer could do with one of these
At first I thought well, this is a bit silly isn't it? It's neat, but it sure does look like a lot of time and effort designing something that really isn't very... then 7:18 happened and I immediately understood. Wow. This is wonderful. Seeing them in motion with the music really helps you "get it", all you have to do is let yourself get a little immersed and it's magical. I found myself thinking "Man, these guys are really killing it!" And they're just little animatronics! Hahaha. Thank you for sharing this!!!
The plastic-peeling music is my favorite running gag on this channel.
Never knew something like this existed but now I want one! Looks like a fun novelty item to take out during the holidays!
Back in my day if you wanted to see an animatronic band you had to go to Chuck E’ Cheese. Those early 2000’s kids were spoiled
A huge thankyou for all of your videos Mat. Most people probably don't appreciate quite the amount of time, effort, and skill that is needed to make videos like these, but I do, and I look forward to every one of them.
Cue someone who hacks it to add custom MIDI of recent pop hits, reverse engineers the movement code, and fashions custom characters ...
I kinda want to see a plastic reenactment of "Whiplash". Maybe the "Guest" port can be used to animate an injection-moulded J.K. Simmons throwing a chair.
Fascinating! I'd never heard of this adult toy and can easily understand how it brings a smile to your face. Delightful 🤩
It's like having a little slice of The House on the Rock on one's desk. Things can be silly and cool at the same time, and I think this fits that bill just fine.
I always wanted to live at House on the Rock! I love that place!!!