Hit Clips

About

Hit Clips are a series of micro cartridges that are played in an MP3 like deceive in which the cartridges are inserted. The toy was manufactured and produced by Tiger Electronics. The cartridges each contains a digital chip with small sample of billboard top 100 hits of its time, although recordable hit clips were available as well as one with FM radio capabilities.

Originally, a cartridge could only hold 1 minute and 15 seconds of a song, but later releases could play up to 2 minutes. Recordable Hit Clip cartridges could also hold up to 2 minutes of audio.

The sound quality of the Hit Clips players are considered to be of low quality, being a toy this is understandable. In order to fit the music clips onto the cartridges, data had to be compressed and could only play in mono sound.

Interestingly, Tiger also released a version of Hit Clips geared towards preschoolers called Kid Clips. Kid Clips feature fat cartridges to prevent the child from breaking them, as well as a plastic radio to insert them into, a Disney version was also released which included cartridges with Disney songs and a plastic jukebox.

Despite the availability of tape and disc players and music tapes and CDs, it did manage to become popular with kids much like Pocket Rockers did, and for a fad amongst kids it managed to turn out very successful.

A Possible Modern Variation

While not entirely the same technology as Hit Clips, a similar toy has been produced in the modern day, a series of storybooks with plastic discs and a detatchable music player for toddlers. The discs are thick, solid plastic and do not actually contain any music. Instead, the music is preloaded onto the player. The player has three buttons on the inside, which tell it which set of songs to load up. When a child puts a disc into the player, it has carved sections on the back which press down the button that corrispond to that set of songs.

It's actually pretty innovative, since the discs seem to purely just be for show. If a child were to lose a disc or, by some strange feat of strength break one, then it doesn't necessarily need to be replaced. All the parent needs to do is find something to hold down the button when the player is closed. It's also possible that a parent with a 3D printer could print a replacement disc or just use a disc from another book, as there doesn't seem to be any way to prevent a disc from one book's player being played in another book's player, and will presumably just load up the songs specific to that player.