I had a password journal and the thing I hated the most was how freaking loud it was when you would open it, it's not very secret if the whole house knows you are writing in your journal
Mine would play a whole 5 second music clip then say some greeting and it would scare the shit outta me. I would have to hold the palm of my hand over the speaker to make it quiet at night lol.
@@hobqueer YES OMG I still have mine and I remember you could reset the password with this little tiny button at the top, so my sister would use a DS stylus to press the button and reset the password on me 😂
thats so not true. y/n doesnt know harry styles or any of the 1D boys because all she does is read at starbucks sipping her pumpkin spiced latte which she will later spill on harry right before he asks her to go on tour with them because shes not like other girls
War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by siblings and their cool tech toys.
The reason there was so much security in girl tech was because how much boy toys encouraged spying in your sister. I got an ad from the early 2000s once saying ‘wanna spy on your sister! This toy car has a camera attached to it so you can sneak into her room without anyone knowing!” And that was scary
I swear almost every single boy tech toy was just “want to spy on your sister and/or scare her” and would always show the brother laughing their butt off
I had a hello kitty password journal. I didn’t want an overcomplicated password so I made it “pencil,” but when I recorded it I said in a weird voice so when I tried to unlock the journal the next day I was screaming PENCIL at the top of my lungs into the crumb-sized microphone hole
I used to be able to fake the password well enough to open my sisters journal She started using a specific drawer slamming shut as the password sound Never did find out which piece of furniture it was
I’m still salty about never receiving the password journal. It wasn’t because it was “too expensive”.... it was because they didn’t want me to have secrets.
My parents actually couldn't afford this stuff, but my Mom got me an old fashioned lock journal from the dollar store and next thing I knew both my little sisters were reaching under my mattress to break in and peak about my kid crushes lmao. Me & my bestie later kept a spy journal, just a regular notebook. And said bestie and sisters made up a spy club, all notebooks, origami football notes and walkie talkies =-p and a sound-amplifying "spy" toy from The LimitedTOO with the giant Spice Girls lollipops haha x-p
The password journals voice recognition was so bad that me doing a really terrible impression of my older sister could get into her password journal more reliably that she could
I did this to my older cousin after she locked twenty dollars in it and told me I could have it if I got in (I knew the words but she insisted the voice recognition would keep me out) TLDR I got twenty dollars
My family still makes fun of me for the password journal I got as a child. It could understand everyone's voice but mine, I was sitting there on Christmas screaming "flower!" At it, while it would say "please try again" in a British accent. Awful experience.
Billiam starting his video with "I'm actually known as billy but you can call me billiam" has the same energy as a child discovering their parents have real names that aren't mom and dad XD
my mom refers to my dad by his name so when i was a kid i'd refer to my dad for his name as well, i dont know why this didn't happen with my mom tho, because my dad also refered her by her name too :p
I had a password journal, and I would only focus on two things: boys and revenge. I was just a child full of vengeance. One time, my sister’s friend went up to me and was like “hi can I read your diary?” as if I’m supposed to say yes? Anyways Jason if you see this I was madly in love with you
I remember when I was in 4th/5th grade I got a valentine from my crush at school and I was embarrassed that my mom would see it so I hide it in the secret compartment under my password journal... I just found my journal the other week and the valentine was still there after 12+ years 🤣
@@toonandy2189 haha oh gosh not much, just that i wrote myself into the code lyoko story because i was sooo into the show as a kid. such an underrated gem of a show!
Oof. As a woman, hearing the story of the inventor of girl tech constantly being rejected because "girly" ideas are bad, but then her male colleagues stole the ideas and took the credit, and then she was fired for it, really hit hard. I hate how common that is.
Early 2000's Girly tech toys like this are the reason I study Electrical Engineering today! Super appreciative of those who made these breakthroughs :)
@@-divinetragedy worse part is that i was allowed to get normal toys meant for boys or girls........ unless it came to these things, then i was stuck with the boys stuff only, or else my parents wouldn't buy it. Barnacles. Admittedly back then i just accepted it (even though secretly i hated that) but if i knew the IM-Me existed, oh boy young me would have wanted that so bad, more then anything else i wanted as a kid.
It's such weird gendered advertising. Like, girls were these mysterious fae-like creatures you couldn't hope to understand. Even if they are half of the general population.
Yes! Especially for the spy gear type of toys. They'd have commercials of boys trying to peer in the windows of an all girl's slumber party and were using the toys to spy and eavesdrop on them, probably creating a whole new generation of stalkers.
Purposely left my diary out and about assuming my brother would read it like the boys in the commercials so I could convince my mom to buy me a password journal. My brother returned my diary later that day without reading it. Never got the journal
@Iliana Dough LMAOOO You just reminded me why I never got these tech toys to begin with, I wanted them but was scared that if my voice ever changed (I was somewhat aware of puberty), it would never open again.
I had a friendchip and I remember actually handing it to a girl on a school trip because she said she was interested in playing with it. I remember her being so excited and asking "Who am I talking to?" And I said "me"...to which she promptly handed it back and said "Oh. Nevermind." I, um, wasn't a popular kid.
Reminds me of one of the Nostalgia Critic commercial specials when he said "Boys toys were just girl's toys painted a different color and given less options"
i had a password journal in the early 2010s and the voice recognition feature was obviously terrible. You would record a sentence (mine was "diamonds", said in my normal voice) and then you would have to say it EXACTLY LIKE THAT or else it wouldnt open. id get so mad id pry it open with a fork lmao
My sister had one during the same time period and everyone BUT her could get into it. I could with both a falsetto and my normal voice and my voice was deeper than hers.
@@Retro_Red oh my god thats funny lol. i got mine for Christmas and tried doing everything to get it open, deep voice, falsetto- nothing worked cept the fork
a sister of a friend of mine had one. he tried to open it and it didnt work. i tried and it did. we where scared because the sister was like 4 years older than us so we closed that shit fast and got the hell out of her room before she could see us.
Same thing happened with me! I kept having to shout out my password (which defeated the point of keeping it secret) in order to set it and open it. Even after all of that my older sister still got into it!🤦🏼♀️
My brother used to have one of those voice opening journals. Me and my sister figured out 2 ways to open it, 1. we just fucking yelled into the microphone and it worked 2. We just threw it really hard onto the ground and it popped right open.
I don't remember them selling one for boys, but also that poor bastard, just wanted a little privacy, and next thing he knows his sister's are in his room screaming like banshees and breaking his shit.
I always wanted the Camera Car toy: not to spy on my sister, but to Watch TV in the Living room while my parents were still awake but I was told to go to bed
Yeah, as a kid I had wished that it wasn’t gender branded; because being a boy in the 2000s meant that you couldn’t play with anything that had girl in the name or suggested was for girls; or else you were a girl and as a boy in the early 2000s, that was the worst thing you could be called. Although, I also loved Totally Spies at the time, and secretly really wanted a lot of these things. I had to satisfy myself with the Spy Gear toys. They weren’t bad, but some of this stuff is cooler by comparison 😂
@@julesstephenson8935 Totally Spies was a weird show, sure I have watched it when I was younger, but it was because it was on Teletoon as reruns. I never knew it has so many fetishes, I thought it would be like Charlies Angels but Anime like, and it sorta is, with the spies being based on the Angels, and Jerry being like Charlie, but he might as well be like Q from the James Bond films up to The World Is Not Enough. Sure Jerry does give Sam, Alex, and Clover their mission, but he also gives them spy gadgets that are as whacky as what Q gives to James Bond. A Makeup Compac that is also a communication device, a compac that repells physics itself, and so on.
@@julesstephenson8935 It's ironic because now every guy admits they liked Totally Spies growing up but were too embarrassed to tell anybody, so basically everyone was afraid of ridicule for nothing lol, there's also a meme that went like "Real niggas watched Totally Spies and didn't tell a single soul" lol
@@ChaseMC215 I just recently realized how much spy-related stuff there was in the 2000s, Charlie's Angels and James Bond reboots, SpyGear, Austin Powers, Jett Jackson, Cody Banks, Kim Possible, Totally Spies, and hell Spy Kids was the first movie I ever watched in a theater.
My best friend and I used Justice knock-offs of the IM-ME. I forgot what it was called. But it came with an alarm clock that I accidentally set for midnight where it went off every night but I had no idea where I hid it so for like two years I just kinda suffered with the consequences of my mistakes as I heard it beep for about one minute before I could ever properly find it.
A very good idea to make your mortal enemy suffer tbh... 'What is that ring?' 'I dont know Jonathan, everyday, right at 3AM, the whole house ring. It had been three years, yet the sound never fail to ring and disturb my sleep.'
I had a password journal as a kid. My mom didn’t want to get it for me, but after years of asking, she finally got it for me. I was so excited, and my password was “Orlando Bloom”. (This was when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, and I had the biggest crush ok?) my family teased me because the journal had trouble understanding me, and I would end up shouting at the damn thing.
Adults: *having lunch in the kitchen* You, from the echoing depths of the house: OrLaNdO BlOoM. orlANDO blOOM. ORLANDO BLOOM. Adults, taking a sip from their drink: ah, the child wants to write in their diary. *checks watch* they're a little late, they usually start 15 minutes ago.
The password journal and password puppies was on my Christmas list for YEARS, I never got it but I'm 23 now and if i find one of these one day I will 100% spend my money on them
Honestly, I think that's part of it. It's getting better...ish, but young girls weren't brought up to feel safe. One could say it's predatory marketing, but maybe that's too deep.
I also think it's very telling that many of the products focus on privacy and control for young girls bc we are often told, intentionally or otherwise, that what others think is more important than what we thing and that we are always being judged/watched
and that the toys for boys were so they could spy on their sisters and/or just freak them out i don't think there were any nefarious intentions behind it beyond kids playing, but also there are definitely some Implications there
It seemed like adds made by 50 year olds who watched tween movies and Disney Channel showes aimed at tween girls to see what 8 year old boys were like.
@@kayEnt3rtainm3nt Getting stuck in the laundry machine is such a weird trend and so specific that I am sure it is based on someone's lived experience.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive I doubt it actually happened. You would either need a really tiny machine, or a really big woman. The latter would be the most likely, if it did happen they probably just called the fire department or ambulance
Oh my god I remember that Diary... My password was sk8r boi for so long until my mom figured it out then I changed it to Barbie girl cus I hated Barbies and thought she would never guess haha
I had the password journal. I used to LOVE that thing until the day it wouldn't allow me in anymore. I remember spending hours yelling "BETTY BOOP" at it and it just goes "oops, try again" over and over. Overall, a very stressful experience lmao
I had one of the password journals and it was actually really amazing having that privacy as a little girl, it felt like I could really talk about what was in my mind without fear of my parents or brother snooping. Which for someone growing up in a problematic household was a real godsend. I know it sounds trivial but teaching little girls to respect their boundaries and demand privacy was pretty radical in the early 2000's and it was really important.
We still make fun of my sister for her trouble with the password journal. We both received them for Christmas one year, and every time she tried to open hers it was just a chorus of her saying her pass phrase, "Soccer" in different tones to see if it would finally open.
Oh, I’m still mad about mine. I had one, and my passcode was “chocolate”. I remember, way after I actually cared about getting the sticker’s I’d left in there, I would bring it on car trips and say “chocolate” 500 times in different tones. Imagine my annoyance when my parents told me much later that if you take a pencil and stick it in an emergency opening, it pops open. I still remember it saying “welcome back!” and something about how a ton of people (me) tried to break in
Yeah I left my password journal at my friend's house and I had wrote how her sister was a brat and her mom babied her. She opened it somehow and read it. I was so embarrassed for years and still remember this.
I also tried to befriend the girl with all the pixiechix & pollypocket toys. Her parents were wealthy so she had the green Razor scooter the day it came out and would invite the whole class to her bomb af birthday parties. She had like 15 Tamagachi's and gave me one bc my parents couldn't really afford to get me the newer toys very often 🥺🥺🖤🖤
@@doccifer2791 We stayed friends til the end of the school year til I moved. I went to over 16 different schools elementary through to high-school from constantly being bounced around from family member to family member. So sadly I never really stayed anywhere long enough to make and keep friends from school.
I actually vividly remember the first time I started seeing technology toys like these marketed for me as a little girl and having so much joy, it was so new and exciting. Similarly when I first saw nerd rebel. It's so crazy to me now that the poor woman who came up with it had to fight so hard for it.
Same here, I loved these technology toys! I hope the women that fought hard is having a great life right now and she got the credit/recognition she deserves. I am studying computer animation. It's a blend of art and technology, and I'm inspired by these toys growing up.
If Billiam made a 6 hour video where he's just like "hey this old shit exsisted" and it's just him talking about the bubonic plague, I'd watch every second of it with a stupid smile on my face
i literally begged my parents for the im-me, but i didn’t have a single friend that had one & literally never used it. i can’t believe they wasted 60$ on it
The exact same thing happened to me, I begged my mom to get it and when she did I was so excited and got it all set up but none of my friends had one so I literally never used it either LOL!!
@@TRiNaZaRda now you two need to talk to each other on your I’m-me’s and become best friends to make your parents money worth it all these years later lol it was destiny
According to the commercial you don't need an imme to send or receive messages, and for those who don't have it could sign up using a pc. I guess the problem then was who would dare share the pc?
Man I wanted that journal so bad as a kid. If it wasn't for the 2000s era I wouldn't be journaling as much today. I love that you brought up the point of companies marketing privacy and security devices to little girls. It's a really weird concept that I feel needs to be talked about.
I didn’t have any of these toys yet this was so nostalgic for me just from the commercials. It’s funny how the advertisements from when we were young stuck with us... says a lot about how media really does influence us 😳
my cousin and i got im-me's for christmas in 2010 and i vividly remembering being in the same room as her and messaging about how annoying our little cousins were on that uncomfortable to hold little pink constantly open slide phone
I remember seeing the password journal and being like "whats stopping some particularly determined sibling from just ripping the plastic shell apart to get at the journal?
That is exactly what my little brother did to get into mine. And then exactly what I did years later to get into my journal after going through a voice change and forgetting the password.
Make it black, maybe add some edgy flames and call it a spy journal, Booom marketed for boys. Easy! It's not like they didn't do it with Polly pocket and mighty max
I had. First days it was cool. Then my brother managed to open it and read the shit I wrote with invisible ink. Then I couldn't bother to keep on writing but tbf I was never much of a diary writer
I remember trying to keep a diary when I was younger because everyone on TV was doing it, plus Diary of a Wimpy Kid plus Dork Diaries, which was just Diary of a Wimpy Kid for girls (and also kind of worse looking back on it) were all about diaries, but nothing interesting happened to me so I never wrote in them, plus I'd just forget I even had one and didn't write in it
I had one, but stopped keeping one when my dad read it without my permission, got mad about what I wrote in it, fussed at me bout it, so I swore off diaries after that, and he's now mad that I refuse to take up writing in a diary again...
I'm Swedish and never saw any of these so this intrigued me on many levels and definitely brought back many 90s memories of writing secret notes with secret language or secret code and the extremely huge problem of brothers and their friends trying to find your secrets. This video made me remember and realize why I still to this day feel like doors and walls have ears because back then its quite possible an ear was pressed against it to listen. I stuffed popcorn into my door lock as a child so that nobody could look through the key hole. I do remember the 1-2 years that a lot of brands tried to get the invisible ink to take off to a cheap price but you never knew if it dried out and different inks had different ways to become visible so it all flopped pretty quickly. So many memories from a tiny toy review video. :p
I was designing myself whole new alphabets that looked like comic sans or some ancient handwritings xD This video gave me also some flashbacks from those times, when I loved to write random encrypted letters on thin rolls of paper, rolling them up tightly and putting them in random places at my school. I bet that some of them are still there, because I was really trying to put them inside such weird places and objects, that no one would expect them to be there. I was inspired by the concept of time capsules back then... A few of those were, for example, thrown under the wooden floor of small scene, where every major gathering or conference was made. Translating most of them after all those years would be a nightmare, because none of my alphabets survived to this day - i would have to reverse engineer whole writing system of those xD Only about last 2 years of my activity is written in number-based codes, that converts any kind of text into long string of numbers without any gaps between. Those codes I still remember tho; I even sometimes use it today for fun on my smartphone and laptop XD Cheers from Poland XD
Okay I still have my password journal somewhere and let me tell you...NEVER activate it while the batteries are dying. Once I accidentally hit the button as I was trying to sleep and a slow demonic voice asked from the shadows “Your password please”. My heart stopped for a moment I swear. 🤣
@@yeaaaaaaaaaaahff she stared, terrified into the shadows. It had been years since she'd last entered her password, the last time ending in utter catastrophe. She shuddered at the dark memory. She knew that all she needed to do was turn away, maybe drop the journal off in a donation bin the next morning, or perhaps at her neices house, but something beckoned her towards it. She picked up the old journal, the once vivid colours now faded and dull, the journal seemed to pulse with sinister energy as she looked it over. It was just as she remembered it, only darker. Beads of sweat formed on her brow as she held the journal in her shaking hands, her brain conjured up memories of the book's password, A phrase she had spent so many years forgetting. Her senses screamed at her to put the journal away, to throw it out the window! But she just couldn't listen. Her mouth opened in spite of herself, and it seemingly effortlessly prepared to utter the cursed words of a childhood long lost. She knew now that this had all been a mistake, that she never should have given in to the journal's deceptively intoxicating call, but it was far too late to stop things now. Her rationality panicked as her lips shakingly spoke the cursed password, her eyes winced in anticipation of the overwhelmingly evil aura she was about to unleash When, All of a sudden: *"pAssWoRD inCoRRecT, PleAsE RepEaT YouR pASsWorD"*
i remember my older sister had the password journal. the thing was that she couldn't keep it a secret from me because I knew her password and had the exact same voice as her.
Speaking my password to unlock my journal on top of the motion sensor alarm and literal fucking beam alarm systems set up in my room was the dopest shit ever I felt like such a spy at 9 years old. We all had like 45 pages worth of notes passed back and fourth in class, talking about boys, sports, school life, third grade gossip etc. It was such a fun ride cracking it open years later
I got a password journal and used the example password "rockstar" when I visited some extended family, it's been 7 years and my aunt's coworkers still know me as "rockstar" XD
The im-me really reminds me of pictochat for the ds. I remember being on school field trips and everyone having their ds lite with them and just sitting in pictochat talking about literally nothing. There’s always a complaint that kids never have to make their own fun anymore but if drawing circles for hours on your ds isn’t “making your own fun” idk what is
Girl tech is the reason I still have a windows xp pc. I had their video journal digital camera and computer program. I used it to keep a lot of old photos of myself as a kid and from the ages of 12-14 I used it as my only diary. I have memory loss so I don’t have much memory of my time during those years so I reread that journal all the time
My sister had an im-me, and I think she had a few friends who also had them, that she talked to. She eventually gave it to me, and I ended up talking with a stranger and somewhat becoming friends with them (not really. They were barely even an acquaintance, because we didn't use them THAT much). But now I wonder if that was one of my sister's friends and she thought I was her. Oops.
I really fucking wanted these as a kid. I was under the impression that I would be able to connect with my friends at their house. I was young and didn't understand their limitations. But as a little girl who lived in a very small town who got lonely sometimes, this seemed like a cool solution.
My sister had a password journal and I used to just pull and force the cover open, draw in it and then snap it closed and put it back. This was the source of most of our quarrels for a year and a half lol 🙊
honestly having IM-Me be a closed network like that is a pretty good way to vet people for the service? So far as I am aware, the other chat services being more widely available makes them inherently less child-friendly in the early days of the internet. I'm not for preventing children from seeing EVERYTHING but having a place that is solely for them and not widely known to other adults is a plus. And that privacy can also be dangerous in the wrong hands, but man I'll bet that this really helped some kids get through some stuff, even if the barrier for entry was kinda high.
11:34- my dad went to college in the 90s and majored in computer science, and this is what email was like for him lmao- he had an email and his friends had them, and no one else did
0:10 You have no idea the amount of joy that filled me when I saw this. I have a vivid memory of those things, but only one. I loved it in my memory and my present self wanted one so bad. Problem was so much time had passed and I was so young in the memory. I thought I imagined them. I thought I would never see one again. It is the smallest lingering pain you can even imagine. Almost 20 years of having an itch you can’t scratch. Seeing that thing filled a void. A tiny void, but a void non the less
My sis had little instant messager things but instead of using the internet they were like walkie talkies where you had to be within a certain range in order to receive the message from the other one hahaha. We would literally just sit on other sides of her room..
I can see the headlines now... "Florida Man, Billiam, charged with involuntary manslaughter after delivery man is accidentally killed by homemade security system rigged from children's toys."
@@ryanjl9 seriously, while guns aren't cheep you can pick on up for a few hundred bucks and a box of amo for 20. The licenses process can be the most expensive part. How much working kids toys can you buy for less than a 1000
I honestly miss having a landline phone. And it's so crazy, my family was broke when all of this was new and I was in my early teens so we couldn't afford these but I remember wanting these "spy" tech stuff because of Spy Kids and Totally Spies. :D It was a fun time.
When I was little my older brother did a horrible impression of my voice and my password journal goddam OPENED! I was so upset, changed my password that day.
The biggest issues with the Password Journal was that it's main selling point didn't work. Your password didn't matter since you could say anything and it'd open. My best guesses is the tech to make it actually happen would have either been too expensive for a children's toy or it wasn't quite developed yet OR they didn't want any child to actually get locked out of their journal (maybe even a combination of it all). All I remember is being extremely disappointed at it and my mom taking it back to the store LOL.
Voice recognition was terrible in the 90's on a powerful PC, let alone some children's toy with a toaster computer. Most of it was just stuff to put in movies to sell computers and toys for. All good intentions for essentially useless gadgets more imaginary in use than practical.
@@cattysplat I've been reading the comments and apparently some people got it to work when you use a recognizable cadence and some people DID get permanently locked out. The computer was absolutely a toaster lol.
I feel it defeats the point of a secret diary if you need to shout at it to make it open. All they needed was an inconspicuous numpad, or even a key, Make it an electronic RFID key to keep it "high-tech" and still make it easy for younger girls to use...But I feel, the girls old enough to keep a diary must have been old enough to figure a numpad lock. I actually think the numpad was an obvious choice. Hell, have an additional code to open a secret compartment! Have another code to turn on the black light lamp! Have another "Lockdown code" to prevent your diary from opening _even if the correct code is introduced_ to keep it extra safe! Were they even fucking trying??
When I was a young kid my mom gave me a tape recorder I spent hours pretending to interview stars singing and recording songs so on replay it seemed like a radio show I even did little ads
@@themillionairess775 oh I wish I took off after high school to take care of my ill mom who passed last year now I'm just sitting here like wtf do I do now I have thought about podcasts but who would listen to a weird loner like me I was more saying it because as a girl that tape recorder meant the world to me I feel girls are just as interested in tech toys as boys it just took longer for companies to understand that
@@vixievonlyn I agree! And try the podcast! Maybe you could talk about about caregiving as one of the reoccurring subjects on your channel. As someone with senior citizen parents, I'd be interested that. Just an idea :)
@@vixievonlyn i dont really listen to podcasts, but i believe that someone out there will support you; heck, do it on youtube, experiment with different formats, etc.
Same here! I got a tape recorder with a little microphone and i used to sing songs and interview people and sing "whos in the house? Jesus in the house" it was big ali g at the time in the 90s
I had that exact model of the password journal with invisible ink and all, I hid it somewhere so good and so smart that I’ve forgotten days later WHERE I hid it and so it remained missing for some months until it was found with the batteries melted inside and the battery port damaged. I could no longer get it to work in order to open the diary and it has remained shut since. All my drawings and secrets locked away for good.
bruh I used to have a password journal but mine had an alarm feature where if a stranger tries to break in an alarm noise would play And you could also make your own alarm noise of you screaming
@@toonandy2189 my alarm would probably be "hey I know you're trying to open my stuff and I understand that you want my stuff but please don't. It's very rude. If it's me in the future trying to open this thing, I get it just keep trying and eventually it will open."
That shit was scary. I tried opening mine at night one time and the stupid alarm went off. I wasn't expecting it, and my mom found out that I had stayed up.
@@myral3880 I had a "friend" who got me in a lot of trouble because he came over and broke into my cousins journals/diaries at the time. Locks aren't as secure as you'd think and he knew how to disassemble a lot of things and put them back together well enough.
@@AzraelThanatos yeah especially when you know how to reset it easily due to forgetting passwords so often and changing batteries. The reset thingy was in the battery compartment or at least with the model i had it was.
@@AzraelThanatos I only had to deal with an older brother who's a year and like 8-9 months older and by the time I would have wanted something like that he really could have cared less what I was doing.
if my brother had done that, i'd have stringed him up by his toes and fingers by the sea at low tide, and left him there to erode with the crashing waves.
I have never thought about how the password journal contributed to my love of STEM. As a kid, I had 2 of them (I was and still am the only kid in the family and got totally spolied, no judgement please). I loved that journal and one day I felt like figuring out how it worked, so I opened it up. Well, somehow I messed up the swivel light mechanism and asked for another. Tried to find out how the light mechanism worked on the new one and then ended up messing up the button on that one. Moral of the story is that I loved figuring out how it worked and that STEM has stayed with me as I'm currently pursuing a STEM PhD! Sometimes breaking things is worth it haha
Company: creates spy toys for guys spy on their sisters Company: creates security toys for girls to protect themselves Everything balanced as things should be
![Chat Toys Were Weird [CYBIKO, CHAT NOW, AND MORE] | Billiam](/img/n.gif)
I had a password journal and the thing I hated the most was how freaking loud it was when you would open it, it's not very secret if the whole house knows you are writing in your journal
Hahahah exactly hahaha
hence the scene with the boy sneaking up on his sistee using the invisible ink lol
Mine would play a whole 5 second music clip then say some greeting and it would scare the shit outta me. I would have to hold the palm of my hand over the speaker to make it quiet at night lol.
@@ham2629OOH LA LA LA-LA, LA LA LA-LA
WELCOME BACK.
@@hobqueer YES OMG I still have mine and I remember you could reset the password with this little tiny button at the top, so my sister would use a DS stylus to press the button and reset the password on me 😂
My sister broke into my password journal and read how much I thought Danny Phantom was cute.. I'm 29 and she still teases me about it.
should of used a better password.
But can she blame you? Danny Phantom IS cute!
LOL
F
i had a crush on danny phantom as a kid too haha !!
as the cold night air rushed through y/n’s room she pulled her hair into a messy bun and yelled, “HARRY STYLES” into her password journal.
This made me laugh way harder then it should have!!!bsbdbdhdh
thats so not true. y/n doesnt know harry styles or any of the 1D boys because all she does is read at starbucks sipping her pumpkin spiced latte which she will later spill on harry right before he asks her to go on tour with them because shes not like other girls
My friend tried that. He found out his sister likes to get *Blacked*
Please omg the wattpad flashbacks I'm having lmao
LOLLLL
Each of these toys is just a weapon in the never-ending sibling war.
A sibling arms race, if you will
War has changed.
It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by siblings and their cool tech toys.
-THE RACE WAR STARTS NOW!- THE GENDER WAR STARTS NOW!
@@fermiLiquidDrinker War... War never changes...
@@Potleafeon War has changed.
The reason there was so much security in girl tech was because how much boy toys encouraged spying in your sister. I got an ad from the early 2000s once saying ‘wanna spy on your sister! This toy car has a camera attached to it so you can sneak into her room without anyone knowing!” And that was scary
HONESTLY
Dam what a pervert
I swear almost every single boy tech toy was just “want to spy on your sister and/or scare her” and would always show the brother laughing their butt off
I'm a girl and my dad got me the passwords journal and the car with the camera on top. I loved the spy stuff so he got all of it lol.
So Girl Tech is basically a counter technology for the spying 'toys' for boys.
I had a hello kitty password journal. I didn’t want an overcomplicated password so I made it “pencil,” but when I recorded it I said in a weird voice so when I tried to unlock the journal the next day I was screaming PENCIL at the top of my lungs into the crumb-sized microphone hole
this comment made me laugh too hard lmao
😂😂😂
if Kira used the Password journal as his Death Note he would never got caught.
oh my god
Too true.
for a second i thought you ment kira from dino thunder
I'm imagining various scenes from Death Note with Light using the Password Journal and I can't stop laughing Someone needs to edit that or make a skit
Most YT comments are trash but this one is actually really funny
me, screaming at my password journal which wasn't understanding me: "I LOVE TROY BOLTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
lmaooo
Omfg same though 👀
The mid-2000s is strong with this one
I hated my password journal because you could just pull it open without breaking it, and it could never understand my password anyway
HAHHAHAHA
I used to be able to fake the password well enough to open my sisters journal
She started using a specific drawer slamming shut as the password sound
Never did find out which piece of furniture it was
….that’s actually brilliant and I never considered the use of a non-verbal password before
lmfaoo omg💀🤣
She might be a genius
I choked reading this😭😭😭
big brain lmao 😅😅
I’m still salty about never receiving the password journal. It wasn’t because it was “too expensive”.... it was because they didn’t want me to have secrets.
@@crystocious6715 they played themselves
My parents actually couldn't afford this stuff, but my Mom got me an old fashioned lock journal from the dollar store and next thing I knew both my little sisters were reaching under my mattress to break in and peak about my kid crushes lmao.
Me & my bestie later kept a spy journal, just a regular notebook. And said bestie and sisters made up a spy club, all notebooks, origami football notes and walkie talkies =-p and a sound-amplifying "spy" toy from The LimitedTOO with the giant Spice Girls lollipops haha x-p
@Spyral StormTeacup just like Harriet the Spy 🕵️♀️!
Oof that’s sketchy af
Yeah, because $20 is *sooooo expensive*
The password journals voice recognition was so bad that me doing a really terrible impression of my older sister could get into her password journal more reliably that she could
My sister would do that too lmao, it worked a bit too well.
I did this to my older cousin after she locked twenty dollars in it and told me I could have it if I got in (I knew the words but she insisted the voice recognition would keep me out)
TLDR I got twenty dollars
Same! I had to open my journal with a spoon because it could recognize my own voice???
“More reliably than she could” omfg this made me wheeze 😂😅
I wouldn’t even do an impression, I would just say the password cause it didn’t even work for my sister, but for some reason work for me
“That is neither very cool nor very connected of you” -new catchphrase
New cash money
My family still makes fun of me for the password journal I got as a child. It could understand everyone's voice but mine, I was sitting there on Christmas screaming "flower!" At it, while it would say "please try again" in a British accent. Awful experience.
Daaang. That must've sucked so bad.
F
This made me buss out laughing. Thanks 😂😂😂😂😂
My cousin was able to break into my password journal too!
This was me but with Nintendogs
Billiam starting his video with "I'm actually known as billy but you can call me billiam" has the same energy as a child discovering their parents have real names that aren't mom and dad XD
Finding out the teacher had a first name 😱
What are you talking about? Their names ARE mom and dad!
Or those cool teachers who let you use their first name
@cprich22 Wait, really?
my mom refers to my dad by his name so when i was a kid i'd refer to my dad for his name as well, i dont know why this didn't happen with my mom tho, because my dad also refered her by her name too :p
I had a password journal, and I would only focus on two things: boys and revenge. I was just a child full of vengeance. One time, my sister’s friend went up to me and was like “hi can I read your diary?” as if I’m supposed to say yes? Anyways Jason if you see this I was madly in love with you
and me you
me but his name was jacob
funny bc now i’m dating a different jacob. i guess i like basic white boy names.
This is my favorite comment
Jasons r great
Reveal your identity eula Lawrence, we know it's you
I remember when I was in 4th/5th grade I got a valentine from my crush at school and I was embarrassed that my mom would see it so I hide it in the secret compartment under my password journal... I just found my journal the other week and the valentine was still there after 12+ years 🤣
I mean.....where would it have gone?
@@johnschwalb well I couldn’t remember if I had taken it out all those years ago...
What was the valentines thing he got you? Did yall ever date? ARE YOU TWO STILL TOGETHER TO THIS DAY?!?!?!
Rip relation
That’s dedication
i was fully obsessed with my password journal in 2005 and i used it to write code lyoko fanfic. now if that ain’t the most mid 2000s thing
@@toonandy2189 haha oh gosh not much, just that i wrote myself into the code lyoko story because i was sooo into the show as a kid. such an underrated gem of a show!
AAAAAAH
Bro I watched that when I was 12. It’s that old.
Same here !!
Why is the English dub of that show so out of order?? Still love it
I am forever mad that Janese didn’t get the respect she deserved for absolutely making my childhood. I’m a software engineer now thanks to her
Oof. As a woman, hearing the story of the inventor of girl tech constantly being rejected because "girly" ideas are bad, but then her male colleagues stole the ideas and took the credit, and then she was fired for it, really hit hard. I hate how common that is.
I felt that too.
everything thing about this video hit hard lol. i always wanted these growing up but i had to play with boys toys
@@-divinetragedy "Umm yes I rather like this boy toy. I'm definitely not thinking of not being a boy right now"
Early 2000's Girly tech toys like this are the reason I study Electrical Engineering today! Super appreciative of those who made these breakthroughs :)
@@-divinetragedy worse part is that i was allowed to get normal toys meant for boys or girls........ unless it came to these things, then i was stuck with the boys stuff only, or else my parents wouldn't buy it. Barnacles. Admittedly back then i just accepted it (even though secretly i hated that) but if i knew the IM-Me existed, oh boy young me would have wanted that so bad, more then anything else i wanted as a kid.
I can still vividly remember the adverts of us boys wanting to know what secrets the girls were hiding.
It's such weird gendered advertising. Like, girls were these mysterious fae-like creatures you couldn't hope to understand. Even if they are half of the general population.
I'm a girl and was wondering what the hell these girls were doing that they had such interesting secrets, my life was boring as hell.
I mean my boy cousings wanted to read my diary so
Yes! Especially for the spy gear type of toys. They'd have commercials of boys trying to peer in the windows of an all girl's slumber party and were using the toys to spy and eavesdrop on them, probably creating a whole new generation of stalkers.
Purposely left my diary out and about assuming my brother would read it like the boys in the commercials so I could convince my mom to buy me a password journal. My brother returned my diary later that day without reading it. Never got the journal
“It only opens to YOUR voice”
Spoiler: It almost never opened to my voice
Like ever lmaoo
My brother was better at opening it than me, despite it being my voice as the password
@@athenakammeyer7720 like the spying brother from the commercials, or like you'd end up asking him if he could open it and he could?
I had the journal and it made me self conscious of my voice cause it sounded so mumbly and deep when it repeated it back to me
@Iliana Dough LMAOOO You just reminded me why I never got these tech toys to begin with, I wanted them but was scared that if my voice ever changed (I was somewhat aware of puberty), it would never open again.
I had a friendchip and I remember actually handing it to a girl on a school trip because she said she was interested in playing with it. I remember her being so excited and asking "Who am I talking to?" And I said "me"...to which she promptly handed it back and said "Oh. Nevermind."
I, um, wasn't a popular kid.
Damn, childhood mood. Shit sucked
nooo 🥺 I’m gonna cry :(
That girl is so mean smh
I’m sorry :(
I'm sending you a message on the friendchip right now: Hey girl!!! wow u r so cool!!! so connected !!!
The TV show/movie videos are nice and all, but sometimes we all need to relax with some classic Billiam toy reviews
Hello
Didn’t expect you here old friend
Facts Vail
Gotta love the nostalgia it’s good for the soul
Dude I used to watch your GF theories!! huge fan!
My older brother helped me set up my password diary and got frustrated because it wasn’t working. He yelled “suck eggs!” And it accepted that 😂
The liked are 69 now. Obsolute perfection.
Reminds me of one of the Nostalgia Critic commercial specials when he said "Boys toys were just girl's toys painted a different color and given less options"
oh yeahh
“I feel so used.”
Which I always found funny because honestly most times its the opposite lol
@@AlsoNotimportant apparently yes since no matter how much we say we hate them stereotypes will always be a thing
i had a password journal in the early 2010s and the voice recognition feature was obviously terrible. You would record a sentence (mine was "diamonds", said in my normal voice) and then you would have to say it EXACTLY LIKE THAT or else it wouldnt open. id get so mad id pry it open with a fork lmao
My sister had one during the same time period and everyone BUT her could get into it. I could with both a falsetto and my normal voice and my voice was deeper than hers.
@@Retro_Red oh my god thats funny lol. i got mine for Christmas and tried doing everything to get it open, deep voice, falsetto- nothing worked cept the fork
a sister of a friend of mine had one. he tried to open it and it didnt work. i tried and it did. we where scared because the sister was like 4 years older than us so we closed that shit fast and got the hell out of her room before she could see us.
Same thing happened with me! I kept having to shout out my password (which defeated the point of keeping it secret) in order to set it and open it. Even after all of that my older sister still got into it!🤦🏼♀️
Anyone could get into mine lol
My brother used to have one of those voice opening journals. Me and my sister figured out 2 ways to open it,
1. we just fucking yelled into the microphone and it worked
2. We just threw it really hard onto the ground and it popped right open.
I don't remember them selling one for boys, but also that poor bastard, just wanted a little privacy, and next thing he knows his sister's are in his room screaming like banshees and breaking his shit.
I’m balling this is so funny
This is hilarious imagine just wanting to keep some secrets and your sisters are launching your stuff at the wall like no shame
Alternatively, you could just brute force the cover open. I'm sure the motors holding it down can't be that powerful.
@@lambda5992 just wedge it open with a screwdriver
I always wanted the Camera Car toy: not to spy on my sister, but to Watch TV in the Living room while my parents were still awake but I was told to go to bed
Same like literally to a tee
Genius
I just peeked my head around the corner of my door and could watch a whole ass tv show without them looking behind them!
I wanted to know what my parents were saying about me behind my back after they sent me to my room
It's basically stuff that Sam, Alex, and Clover would use.
Yeah, as a kid I had wished that it wasn’t gender branded; because being a boy in the 2000s meant that you couldn’t play with anything that had girl in the name or suggested was for girls; or else you were a girl and as a boy in the early 2000s, that was the worst thing you could be called. Although, I also loved Totally Spies at the time, and secretly really wanted a lot of these things. I had to satisfy myself with the Spy Gear toys. They weren’t bad, but some of this stuff is cooler by comparison 😂
@@julesstephenson8935
Totally Spies was a weird show, sure I have watched it when I was younger, but it was because it was on Teletoon as reruns.
I never knew it has so many fetishes, I thought it would be like Charlies Angels but Anime like, and it sorta is, with the spies being based on the Angels, and Jerry being like Charlie, but he might as well be like Q from the James Bond films up to The World Is Not Enough. Sure Jerry does give Sam, Alex, and Clover their mission, but he also gives them spy gadgets that are as whacky as what Q gives to James Bond. A Makeup Compac that is also a communication device, a compac that repells physics itself, and so on.
@@julesstephenson8935 It's ironic because now every guy admits they liked Totally Spies growing up but were too embarrassed to tell anybody, so basically everyone was afraid of ridicule for nothing lol, there's also a meme that went like
"Real niggas watched Totally Spies and didn't tell a single soul" lol
@@ChaseMC215 I just recently realized how much spy-related stuff there was in the 2000s, Charlie's Angels and James Bond reboots, SpyGear, Austin Powers, Jett Jackson, Cody Banks, Kim Possible, Totally Spies, and hell Spy Kids was the first movie I ever watched in a theater.
@@DaDualityofMan Define "every guy."
My best friend and I used Justice knock-offs of the IM-ME. I forgot what it was called. But it came with an alarm clock that I accidentally set for midnight where it went off every night but I had no idea where I hid it so for like two years I just kinda suffered with the consequences of my mistakes as I heard it beep for about one minute before I could ever properly find it.
A very good idea to make your mortal enemy suffer tbh...
'What is that ring?'
'I dont know Jonathan, everyday, right at 3AM, the whole house ring. It had been three years, yet the sound never fail to ring and disturb my sleep.'
Hahahha
I wanted the Justice one so bad!
That story gives me some tell tall heart vips
I had a password journal as a kid. My mom didn’t want to get it for me, but after years of asking, she finally got it for me. I was so excited, and my password was “Orlando Bloom”. (This was when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, and I had the biggest crush ok?) my family teased me because the journal had trouble understanding me, and I would end up shouting at the damn thing.
Adults: *having lunch in the kitchen*
You, from the echoing depths of the house: OrLaNdO BlOoM. orlANDO blOOM. ORLANDO BLOOM.
Adults, taking a sip from their drink: ah, the child wants to write in their diary. *checks watch* they're a little late, they usually start 15 minutes ago.
Daamn. This is the most early 2000s story I've ever read, down to the Orlando Bloom bit!
Omg lol. Yea, I had trouble too so I just forced it open. 😑 the voice recognition was shit lol but it was a toy so.. Eh whatdaya expect
I remember thinking that Girl tech was the coolest shit ever and maybe that's why I'm doing a Computing Science degree now
Her marketing worked haha
That is the cutest and most fascinating thing I've ever heard all day
The password journal and password puppies was on my Christmas list for YEARS, I never got it but I'm 23 now and if i find one of these one day I will 100% spend my money on them
SAME.
Literally me
Did the same with many devices. Just fullfill your ambitions girl.
i feel like the creator was just trying to give girls something she didnt have security privacy and ownership to their ideas and thoughts
Damn
Damn that’s deep
Honestly, I think that's part of it. It's getting better...ish, but young girls weren't brought up to feel safe. One could say it's predatory marketing, but maybe that's too deep.
She sounds like such a cool lady
Very deep bro...
I love the idea of a spy movie where two rival factions try and gather intel on one another with Girl Tech and Spy Gear merchandise.
I also think it's very telling that many of the products focus on privacy and control for young girls bc we are often told, intentionally or otherwise, that what others think is more important than what we thing and that we are always being judged/watched
and that the toys for boys were so they could spy on their sisters and/or just freak them out
i don't think there were any nefarious intentions behind it beyond kids playing, but also there are definitely some Implications there
"that's not very cool nor very connected of you"
That killed me
I saw this message just after he said it lol
No one:
Spy toy ads: "we know you like spying on your sister while she's sleeping. Here's a remote controlled car to help you"
It seemed like adds made by 50 year olds who watched tween movies and Disney Channel showes aimed at tween girls to see what 8 year old boys were like.
Those spy toy ads predicted future trends for _other_ video upload and sharing sites.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive Strange that none of them ever had a toy for what to do when your step-sister gets stuck or steals lemons...
@@kayEnt3rtainm3nt Getting stuck in the laundry machine is such a weird trend and so specific that I am sure it is based on someone's lived experience.
@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive I doubt it actually happened. You would either need a really tiny machine, or a really big woman. The latter would be the most likely, if it did happen they probably just called the fire department or ambulance
Oh my god I remember that Diary... My password was sk8r boi for so long until my mom figured it out then I changed it to Barbie girl cus I hated Barbies and thought she would never guess haha
Did she guessed it?
PW Journal: Welcome back! You had _two_ intruders.
Me: yeah. That was me trying get into my damn journal
I had the password journal. I used to LOVE that thing until the day it wouldn't allow me in anymore. I remember spending hours yelling "BETTY BOOP" at it and it just goes "oops, try again" over and over. Overall, a very stressful experience lmao
I had one of the password journals and it was actually really amazing having that privacy as a little girl, it felt like I could really talk about what was in my mind without fear of my parents or brother snooping. Which for someone growing up in a problematic household was a real godsend. I know it sounds trivial but teaching little girls to respect their boundaries and demand privacy was pretty radical in the early 2000's and it was really important.
We still make fun of my sister for her trouble with the password journal. We both received them for Christmas one year, and every time she tried to open hers it was just a chorus of her saying her pass phrase, "Soccer" in different tones to see if it would finally open.
That was basically my experience. Weirdly enough, my brother could get it to open though (even though my voice was the one used for the password)
You have revealed your sister's password to her journal. You fool. Now all of her secrets will be mine.
@@AdonisOuranios You may have her secrets... But can you handle them?
@@AdonisOuranios not if she used invisible ink 😈
Oh, I’m still mad about mine. I had one, and my passcode was “chocolate”. I remember, way after I actually cared about getting the sticker’s I’d left in there, I would bring it on car trips and say “chocolate” 500 times in different tones. Imagine my annoyance when my parents told me much later that if you take a pencil and stick it in an emergency opening, it pops open. I still remember it saying “welcome back!” and something about how a ton of people (me) tried to break in
"It's 3am. The Bart phone rings. Do you answer?"
that made me laugh harder than it should have
Yeah I left my password journal at my friend's house and I had wrote how her sister was a brat and her mom babied her. She opened it somehow and read it. I was so embarrassed for years and still remember this.
Are you still friends with her by any chance lol
Throwback to me trying to be friends with a girl in school so I could play with her PixieChix toy.
I also tried to befriend the girl with all the pixiechix & pollypocket toys. Her parents were wealthy so she had the green Razor scooter the day it came out and would invite the whole class to her bomb af birthday parties. She had like 15 Tamagachi's and gave me one bc my parents couldn't really afford to get me the newer toys very often 🥺🥺🖤🖤
@@lilithlaney1759 she a real one ✊
Solidarity
@@lilithlaney1759 y’all ever became friends or are friends to this day
@@doccifer2791 We stayed friends til the end of the school year til I moved. I went to over 16 different schools elementary through to high-school from constantly being bounced around from family member to family member. So sadly I never really stayed anywhere long enough to make and keep friends from school.
I actually vividly remember the first time I started seeing technology toys like these marketed for me as a little girl and having so much joy, it was so new and exciting. Similarly when I first saw nerd rebel. It's so crazy to me now that the poor woman who came up with it had to fight so hard for it.
Same here, I loved these technology toys! I hope the women that fought hard is having a great life right now and she got the credit/recognition she deserves. I am studying computer animation. It's a blend of art and technology, and I'm inspired by these toys growing up.
As a girl growing up sharing a room with a younger brother, I always wanted the password journal
If Billiam made a 6 hour video where he's just like "hey this old shit exsisted" and it's just him talking about the bubonic plague, I'd watch every second of it with a stupid smile on my face
i literally begged my parents for the im-me, but i didn’t have a single friend that had one & literally never used it. i can’t believe they wasted 60$ on it
The exact same thing happened to me, I begged my mom to get it and when she did I was so excited and got it all set up but none of my friends had one so I literally never used it either LOL!!
@@TRiNaZaRda now you two need to talk to each other on your I’m-me’s and become best friends to make your parents money worth it all these years later lol it was destiny
@@NatCatKitty absolutely
According to the commercial you don't need an imme to send or receive messages, and for those who don't have it could sign up using a pc. I guess the problem then was who would dare share the pc?
I had some knock off kmart version for way less where it was just a digital writer. Address book, ect all in one
Man I wanted that journal so bad as a kid. If it wasn't for the 2000s era I wouldn't be journaling as much today. I love that you brought up the point of companies marketing privacy and security devices to little girls. It's a really weird concept that I feel needs to be talked about.
Surprised this was not a VPN ad, would fit the theme of protecting your diary.
I didn’t have any of these toys yet this was so nostalgic for me just from the commercials. It’s funny how the advertisements from when we were young stuck with us... says a lot about how media really does influence us 😳
the way I just gained so many years of my life back from that little “so cool and connected”
i (a boy) thought girl tech was so cool and i was personally offended that boy tech didnt exist outside of like. spy toys
I feel it fam
Same bro
sure was a learning experience, huh
Honestly making that stuff gendered in the first place was kind of pointless
I feel you bro
“ITS DAVINCI!!!”
Password notebook: “lalaallaalaaalaaalaaaaa”
Billiam: amazed
my cousin and i got im-me's for christmas in 2010 and i vividly remembering being in the same room as her and messaging about how annoying our little cousins were on that uncomfortable to hold little pink constantly open slide phone
The Girl Tech jingle invoked nostalgia in me that I did not know existed
Same.
Same 😆
Same
Same!!
I remember seeing the password journal and being like "whats stopping some particularly determined sibling from just ripping the plastic shell apart to get at the journal?
Damn thats some mega mind thinking, It never occurred to me until I read this comment. Really changes a man.
This comment has so much older sibling energy.
Because you couldn't cover up your crime and you would get busted by your parents
That is exactly what my little brother did to get into mine. And then exactly what I did years later to get into my journal after going through a voice change and forgetting the password.
I can still remember when I had that journal and I heard it do that “WELCOME BACK” and “GOODBYE :DD”. Those sounds are permanently in my head forever.
OH MY GOD I ALSO WANTED THAT SECRET JOURNAL THING, FINALLY ANOTHER DUDE WHO WANTED ONE
For real 😂
It was all of us really
Bruh I wanted one of those so bad as a kid....just with "boy" colors
Make it black, maybe add some edgy flames and call it a spy journal, Booom marketed for boys. Easy!
It's not like they didn't do it with Polly pocket and mighty max
I had. First days it was cool. Then my brother managed to open it and read the shit I wrote with invisible ink. Then I couldn't bother to keep on writing but tbf I was never much of a diary writer
I remember trying to keep a diary when I was younger because everyone on TV was doing it, plus Diary of a Wimpy Kid plus Dork Diaries, which was just Diary of a Wimpy Kid for girls (and also kind of worse looking back on it) were all about diaries, but nothing interesting happened to me so I never wrote in them, plus I'd just forget I even had one and didn't write in it
"Nothing interesting happened to me so I never wrote in them"
I felt that in my soul.
I had one, but stopped keeping one when my dad read it without my permission, got mad about what I wrote in it, fussed at me bout it, so I swore off diaries after that, and he's now mad that I refuse to take up writing in a diary again...
Dear dumb diary is one I loved as a kid... also a girly wimpy kid concept
I would occasionally just write bad poetry and art in mine when the mood struck me
I thought diaries were dumb as a kid XD
I'm Swedish and never saw any of these so this intrigued me on many levels and definitely brought back many 90s memories of writing secret notes with secret language or secret code and the extremely huge problem of brothers and their friends trying to find your secrets. This video made me remember and realize why I still to this day feel like doors and walls have ears because back then its quite possible an ear was pressed against it to listen. I stuffed popcorn into my door lock as a child so that nobody could look through the key hole. I do remember the 1-2 years that a lot of brands tried to get the invisible ink to take off to a cheap price but you never knew if it dried out and different inks had different ways to become visible so it all flopped pretty quickly. So many memories from a tiny toy review video. :p
I was designing myself whole new alphabets that looked like comic sans or some ancient handwritings xD This video gave me also some flashbacks from those times, when I loved to write random encrypted letters on thin rolls of paper, rolling them up tightly and putting them in random places at my school. I bet that some of them are still there, because I was really trying to put them inside such weird places and objects, that no one would expect them to be there. I was inspired by the concept of time capsules back then... A few of those were, for example, thrown under the wooden floor of small scene, where every major gathering or conference was made. Translating most of them after all those years would be a nightmare, because none of my alphabets survived to this day - i would have to reverse engineer whole writing system of those xD Only about last 2 years of my activity is written in number-based codes, that converts any kind of text into long string of numbers without any gaps between. Those codes I still remember tho; I even sometimes use it today for fun on my smartphone and laptop XD Cheers from Poland XD
i never got why people kept diaries or wrote things down… my parents went through all my stuff so i already knew never to write a secret down.
The intense nostalgia I got when the girl said "dancer" to the voice password journal
I was thrown back in time too. It was like that one scene in Ratatouille...
sameeeee
YES LMAO
Okay I still have my password journal somewhere and let me tell you...NEVER activate it while the batteries are dying.
Once I accidentally hit the button as I was trying to sleep and a slow demonic voice asked from the shadows “Your password please”. My heart stopped for a moment I swear. 🤣
This made me burst out in laughter, thank you!
Could be a great horror story about some cursed journal, kind of like tom riddle's journal in harry potter
@@yeaaaaaaaaaaahff she stared, terrified into the shadows. It had been years since she'd last entered her password, the last time ending in utter catastrophe. She shuddered at the dark memory. She knew that all she needed to do was turn away, maybe drop the journal off in a donation bin the next morning, or perhaps at her neices house, but something beckoned her towards it. She picked up the old journal, the once vivid colours now faded and dull, the journal seemed to pulse with sinister energy as she looked it over. It was just as she remembered it, only darker. Beads of sweat formed on her brow as she held the journal in her shaking hands, her brain conjured up memories of the book's password, A phrase she had spent so many years forgetting. Her senses screamed at her to put the journal away, to throw it out the window! But she just couldn't listen. Her mouth opened in spite of herself, and it seemingly effortlessly prepared to utter the cursed words of a childhood long lost. She knew now that this had all been a mistake, that she never should have given in to the journal's deceptively intoxicating call, but it was far too late to stop things now. Her rationality panicked as her lips shakingly spoke the cursed password, her eyes winced in anticipation of the overwhelmingly evil aura she was about to unleash
When,
All of a sudden:
*"pAssWoRD inCoRRecT, PleAsE RepEaT YouR pASsWorD"*
@@cyberneticsquid-godofmassd3759 this actually would make a great plot for a short horror movie
i remember my older sister had the password journal. the thing was that she couldn't keep it a secret from me because I knew her password and had the exact same voice as her.
I had the Password Journal and I specifically remember my password being "Jesse McCartney" LMAO
Bratz dolls, girl tech and Jesse McCartney was such a good era.
omfg i loved him so much
mine would have probably been Orlando Bloom or Leonardo DiCaprio 🤣😂🤣😂
Speaking my password to unlock my journal on top of the motion sensor alarm and literal fucking beam alarm systems set up in my room was the dopest shit ever I felt like such a spy at 9 years old.
We all had like 45 pages worth of notes passed back and fourth in class, talking about boys, sports, school life, third grade gossip etc.
It was such a fun ride cracking it open years later
That's amazing
I got a password journal and used the example password "rockstar" when I visited some extended family, it's been 7 years and my aunt's coworkers still know me as "rockstar" XD
Billiam, I want you to put all of your classic toys in a museum and charge admissions
He's basically already doing that by advertising Raycon.
@Nissan 300ZX wait are they actually, I considered it the other day bc they are advertised by everyone
I was so freaking jealous of everyone who had those 😭 my parents were like " don't you have a normal notebook? just write in it"
The im-me really reminds me of pictochat for the ds. I remember being on school field trips and everyone having their ds lite with them and just sitting in pictochat talking about literally nothing. There’s always a complaint that kids never have to make their own fun anymore but if drawing circles for hours on your ds isn’t “making your own fun” idk what is
hearing that "so cool and connected" jingle made me so happy lol the nostalgia me hit hard
Girl tech is the reason I still have a windows xp pc. I had their video journal digital camera and computer program. I used it to keep a lot of old photos of myself as a kid and from the ages of 12-14 I used it as my only diary. I have memory loss so I don’t have much memory of my time during those years so I reread that journal all the time
My sister had an im-me, and I think she had a few friends who also had them, that she talked to.
She eventually gave it to me, and I ended up talking with a stranger and somewhat becoming friends with them (not really. They were barely even an acquaintance, because we didn't use them THAT much). But now I wonder if that was one of my sister's friends and she thought I was her. Oops.
I really fucking wanted these as a kid. I was under the impression that I would be able to connect with my friends at their house. I was young and didn't understand their limitations. But as a little girl who lived in a very small town who got lonely sometimes, this seemed like a cool solution.
I'm honored to be born on the same day as the "I hate mom" message
Me too! Leo Gang!
I didn't ask to be born, mom!
Idk who John Steinbeck is, but we share a birthday.
Omg you’re a legend!!! I bow down to the power of August 5th
But were you born at 2 o'clock?
My sister had a password journal and I used to just pull and force the cover open, draw in it and then snap it closed and put it back. This was the source of most of our quarrels for a year and a half lol 🙊
honestly having IM-Me be a closed network like that is a pretty good way to vet people for the service? So far as I am aware, the other chat services being more widely available makes them inherently less child-friendly in the early days of the internet. I'm not for preventing children from seeing EVERYTHING but having a place that is solely for them and not widely known to other adults is a plus. And that privacy can also be dangerous in the wrong hands, but man I'll bet that this really helped some kids get through some stuff, even if the barrier for entry was kinda high.
Time for another segment of "Biliam talks about bizarre products from our childhood ".
So true 😅
11:34- my dad went to college in the 90s and majored in computer science, and this is what email was like for him lmao- he had an email and his friends had them, and no one else did
I still have that password journal ad burned into my mind after all these years
The forbidden knowledge must never be forgotten
“INTRUDER‼️🚨🚨🚨”
Damn that alarm would scare me, it was so loud
0:10 You have no idea the amount of joy that filled me when I saw this. I have a vivid memory of those things, but only one. I loved it in my memory and my present self wanted one so bad. Problem was so much time had passed and I was so young in the memory. I thought I imagined them. I thought I would never see one again. It is the smallest lingering pain you can even imagine. Almost 20 years of having an itch you can’t scratch. Seeing that thing filled a void. A tiny void, but a void non the less
Hit clips! They were amazing!!
My sis had little instant messager things but instead of using the internet they were like walkie talkies where you had to be within a certain range in order to receive the message from the other one hahaha. We would literally just sit on other sides of her room..
I wonder if you could secure your house with electric kids toys if you were on a budget or didn't have a gun
I can see the headlines now...
"Florida Man, Billiam, charged with involuntary manslaughter after delivery man is accidentally killed by homemade security system rigged from children's toys."
The gap between "if you were on a budget" and "or you didn't have a gun" is wider than the Suez canal
I Think Home Security System Is Probably Cheaper Then But A Bunch of Toys.
PS: But Not As Fun.
@@ryanjl9 hi-point baebeyyyy
@@ryanjl9 seriously, while guns aren't cheep you can pick on up for a few hundred bucks and a box of amo for 20. The licenses process can be the most expensive part.
How much working kids toys can you buy for less than a 1000
I honestly miss having a landline phone. And it's so crazy, my family was broke when all of this was new and I was in my early teens so we couldn't afford these but I remember wanting these "spy" tech stuff because of Spy Kids and Totally Spies. :D It was a fun time.
i don’t, my mom would pick it up quietly and spy on my conversations.
@@asmrtpop2676 Oh, that sucks, I'm sorry. We only had one at my house, we lived in a small apartment.
Holy shit, i remember most of these adverts they played constantly on Cartoon Network in the early 2000s.
Ah yes being a child in the 90's where boomer helicopter parents didn't know what the word privacy was and taking doors off the hinges was a thing.
I've actually heard that some parents still do that today
@@kittykittybangbang9367 they do 💀 my cousin got his door taken off not that long ago
still more common than it should be where i live
@@kittykittybangbang9367 yeah I got my door taken off for a month a while ago for missing class....parents still do it
my parents did that because my siblings kept locking themselves in their room
When I was little my older brother did a horrible impression of my voice and my password journal goddam OPENED! I was so upset, changed my password that day.
The biggest issues with the Password Journal was that it's main selling point didn't work. Your password didn't matter since you could say anything and it'd open. My best guesses is the tech to make it actually happen would have either been too expensive for a children's toy or it wasn't quite developed yet OR they didn't want any child to actually get locked out of their journal (maybe even a combination of it all). All I remember is being extremely disappointed at it and my mom taking it back to the store LOL.
Voice recognition was terrible in the 90's on a powerful PC, let alone some children's toy with a toaster computer. Most of it was just stuff to put in movies to sell computers and toys for. All good intentions for essentially useless gadgets more imaginary in use than practical.
@@cattysplat I've been reading the comments and apparently some people got it to work when you use a recognizable cadence and some people DID get permanently locked out. The computer was absolutely a toaster lol.
My brother was able to open by force and call the the boy in the add butter fingers
I feel it defeats the point of a secret diary if you need to shout at it to make it open.
All they needed was an inconspicuous numpad, or even a key, Make it an electronic RFID key to keep it "high-tech" and still make it easy for younger girls to use...But I feel, the girls old enough to keep a diary must have been old enough to figure a numpad lock.
I actually think the numpad was an obvious choice. Hell, have an additional code to open a secret compartment! Have another code to turn on the black light lamp! Have another "Lockdown code" to prevent your diary from opening _even if the correct code is introduced_ to keep it extra safe!
Were they even fucking trying??
When I was a young kid my mom gave me a tape recorder I spent hours pretending to interview stars singing and recording songs so on replay it seemed like a radio show I even did little ads
Cool! Did you end up working in radio or having a podcast?
@@themillionairess775 oh I wish I took off after high school to take care of my ill mom who passed last year now I'm just sitting here like wtf do I do now
I have thought about podcasts but who would listen to a weird loner like me
I was more saying it because as a girl that tape recorder meant the world to me I feel girls are just as interested in tech toys as boys it just took longer for companies to understand that
@@vixievonlyn I agree! And try the podcast! Maybe you could talk about about caregiving as one of the reoccurring subjects on your channel. As someone with senior citizen parents, I'd be interested that. Just an idea :)
@@vixievonlyn i dont really listen to podcasts, but i believe that someone out there will support you; heck, do it on youtube, experiment with different formats, etc.
Same here! I got a tape recorder with a little microphone and i used to sing songs and interview people and sing "whos in the house? Jesus in the house" it was big ali g at the time in the 90s
I had that exact model of the password journal with invisible ink and all,
I hid it somewhere so good and so smart that I’ve forgotten days later WHERE I hid it and so it remained missing for some months until it was found with the batteries melted inside and the battery port damaged. I could no longer get it to work in order to open the diary and it has remained shut since. All my drawings and secrets locked away for good.
bruh I used to have a password journal but mine had an alarm feature where if a stranger tries to break in an alarm noise would play
And you could also make your own alarm noise of you screaming
@NintAndy I love your enthusiasm.
@@toonandy2189 my alarm would probably be "hey I know you're trying to open my stuff and I understand that you want my stuff but please don't. It's very rude. If it's me in the future trying to open this thing, I get it just keep trying and eventually it will open."
That shit was scary. I tried opening mine at night one time and the stupid alarm went off. I wasn't expecting it, and my mom found out that I had stayed up.
I remember my sister would hide the password journal under her bed and one time my cousin and I got it and cracked it open and read about her crush💀💀💀
Maybe she should have gotten the lock for her door as well LOL
@@myral3880 I had a "friend" who got me in a lot of trouble because he came over and broke into my cousins journals/diaries at the time. Locks aren't as secure as you'd think and he knew how to disassemble a lot of things and put them back together well enough.
@@AzraelThanatos yeah especially when you know how to reset it easily due to forgetting passwords so often and changing batteries. The reset thingy was in the battery compartment or at least with the model i had it was.
@@AzraelThanatos I only had to deal with an older brother who's a year and like 8-9 months older and by the time I would have wanted something like that he really could have cared less what I was doing.
if my brother had done that, i'd have stringed him up by his toes and fingers by the sea at low tide, and left him there to erode with the crashing waves.
From password journal to being harassed in lobbies, the evolution...
Now I need to know what happened on August 5th at 2 O'Clock
@I OFFER YOU THIS specifically 2 o clock
Catch me at 12 years old """hacking""" my sister's password journal by using one of those shitty voice modulator toys.
I have never thought about how the password journal contributed to my love of STEM. As a kid, I had 2 of them (I was and still am the only kid in the family and got totally spolied, no judgement please). I loved that journal and one day I felt like figuring out how it worked, so I opened it up. Well, somehow I messed up the swivel light mechanism and asked for another. Tried to find out how the light mechanism worked on the new one and then ended up messing up the button on that one. Moral of the story is that I loved figuring out how it worked and that STEM has stayed with me as I'm currently pursuing a STEM PhD! Sometimes breaking things is worth it haha
Company: creates spy toys for guys spy on their sisters
Company: creates security toys for girls to protect themselves
Everything balanced as things should be
uP
Artificially creating a cold war between kids for fun and profit.
Wait why were boys being encouraged to invade girls' privacy?
@@princessjello brother and sister relationship is a weird thing in television shows
Child cold war