Epic Win: Sony Walkman Sports
Submitted by C Rother
My favorite aspect of the Walkman was the ability it gave me to tune out my cousins on endless road trips with the family (“Stop touching me! No, you stop! Mooooooooom!”). Sanity was preserved. Sort of. It was like the Bose Noise Canceling Headphone of its day. Just crank. Up. The. Volume. (And risk long-term hearing damage.)
Here’s a very old Walkman commercial that is so 80’s it hurts. The woman is wearing aerobics gear, legwarmers, and has the perfect 80’s short feathered hairdo. I could never get mine to do that.
And is that a GIANT piece of electronic equipment hanging from her scarf belt or what?
Nostalgic FAIL
The Walkman started when Akio Morita (co-Founder of Sony) asked Nobutoshi Kihara to make a portable tape player so he would be able to listen to his own music during his many plane trips.
Feeling. So. Old…
I truthfully still have this exact yellow walkman that I keep in my desk at work! I listen to tapes of classical music when I need to block out the chatter of coworkers. The thrift stores sell tapes for 25-50 cents, and the classical music ones are usually still in great shape!
Ha ha, I still have one. I only got an MP3 player recently, so I used it exercising since cassettes don’t skip like CD’s do.
old… dyah, no kidding! I only gave my totally cool yellow walkman away about a year ago! It served me well, but gotta say I really love my iPod!
Hey, don’t feel bad. I got this as a birthday gift from an old step-dad of mine. I still have it too! Man, I loved that thing.. I’d make my tapes by recording my favorite songs off of the radio. Once day it ate one of my tapes, and I almost cried cus I couldn’t get the tape player to play after that. My dad fixed it though, and I cried with joy. I took it everywhere..
I had the badass digital Sony Walkman. It was great or tuning radio stations once the batteries got too weak to play tapes. It was also capable of playing metal tapes. Remember those? The metal tape revolution never really caught on.
Felonious, are you the vocalist who did the deer in the Magna Doodle entry?
I so, so, so, SO love her hair. Why haven’t the feathers come back yet?
I remember when my handbook in high school said “Walkman radios are not permitted on campus grounds.” A bunch of us got smart and bought one of the many clones that were available.
When teachers tried to confiscate them, we countered that Walkman was a registered trademark of Sony, and our Panasonic (for example) portable cassette player was not the same, so they couldn’t take it. Legally, their hands were tied, and they new it.
The next year, it was changed to “Walkman or Walkman type radios,” but this was the same year that the Discman came out… >.>
lololol I totally still have this.
Cassettes RULE.
Interesant, dat nu vrei sqa adaugi putin umor siteului tau
? O poza haioasa cu animale care se schimba in fiecare zi.
Daca da, da click pe numele meu
It was the best thing they had at the time it was invented, and we didn’t have the best technology back then.
I still have one of these things somewhere. And! I have the speakers attachment for it! The speakers take, like, two D batteries or something, and always made me the popular kid on high school trips because we could have “dances”.
“Now you can lose inches off your waistline. The tape player is so heavy, it creates its own ballast.”
I remember when my parents got a cassette recorder, and I thought it was the most sophisticated thing in the world. I used to ask my Dad to play stuff for me, because I couldn’t believe it worked.
Now, that’s a quality piece of electronics. Anyone wana trade my 80g Zune for that monstrosity?
Hey, they were a great improvement over 8-Tracks. Which were a (portability, anyway) improvement over LPs.
Would you be happier if we went back to hand-cranked wax cylinders?
I still have one and works very good. It also has a clock that can only works when you put it in front of the Sun
In the past 20 years, I’ve probably had 20 Walkmans, whereas my dad still has and uses his first one. I only have one now because I listen to AM sports talk radio.
i had that yellow one! :0 i remember the joy of getting it for christmas! it came with two headfone jacks so two could liesten on a road trip! :0 i think one of the tapes i got along with it was offspring or something. so awesome.
that helped me get thru many hot summer days mowing our huge lawn.
I just wanted to congratulate and thank you guys for continuously reminding all of us of how old and lame we are now. If I could only find my hot pants and Alf t-shirt I might be able to catch Punky Brewster on the dial.
Parachute pants, mesh shirt and Silver Spoons!
ahhh
i remember these….
what a piece of sh*t
someday we will see iphones here.
I got the original yellow one when I was a kid. I only had one tape- a copy of one of my parents’ beatles albums.
I still have mine and it still works most of the time. Still have a few old tapes too, including a few mix tapes from old boyfriends, lol. I used my Walkman while working out. I remember all too well how cumbersome that thing was!
eat it ipod!
I’d just like to say I had two of those, and the second one lasted for years in spite of being dropped more than a few times. When it finally bit the dust, I was gutted. Truly fabulous, the Sony Sports Walkman.
I bought a walkman about every 6 months. This one lasted 2 years.
great design, worked very well, too, most of the time.
I totally had one of these back in the days.
I also had the macarena tape to go with it.
good ol’ days