Tonies - Audiobooks for the modern age

They seem to really be pushing these at the moment. I've had 3 different adverts for them within the space of a minute today.

When you said "I'm sure folks will say what a great idea, I could build this" I instantly envisaged each Tonie as some sort of "wireless flash-drive" which the player streams audio off via some sort of induction system for power and serial comms. How disappointing to learn that it's just a kiddie-friendly appliance accessing a cloud service. I'm glad you touched on that before I reached my keyboard - it's a dealbreaker for me I'm afraid. A system where the avatar contains the actual content would be something you could be confident would work for years. And, hey, it would be yet another niche media format

This seems like it could be a good way for a blind family member to listen to audiobooks. They've really struggled since we moved away from tapes and CDs. The cloud bit does concern me though.

What a nifty toy! I can totally see this being ideal for several situations.

If there were some kind of non-server way of using this, i would buy it. I have hacked a lot of esp32 based devices for smart house stuff for that very reason. I don't like "cloud" I don't trust it and I don't want to rely on it.

My kids would have loved this when they were little, my parents used to enjoy reading to them when they came to visit so the ability to record them reading would have been great. However, they are complete technophobes and the app would have completely baffled them as I'm sure many grandparents would be too. Hopefully there's a way to upload recordings done to some more senior friendly device like a tape recorder! I think you are correct that the Peter Rabbit is from an earlier recording, I had a record in the early 1980s and it sounded just like this.

At first I thought you said each Tony has a NFT (non-fungible token), since that's the newest buzz word in the tech world these days, until I played it again and realized you said NFC (near field communication), which makes a lot more sense.

Super interesting product. Good find, you brightened up my day.

Amiibos for audiobooks? Brilliant.

Speaking of cool toys - Technics record player miniature models: https://www.ebay.com/itm/165405608893

What a wonderful device! They really seem to have thought out most everything to make it work perfectly for you children. Very nice review and I would watch several more similar in nature.

There is an ardunio project called Tonuino (tonuino.de) that cloned the concept but works offline. But i don´t think there are english instuctions yet.

Very similar to the Yoto player but with nicer RFID packages.

I'm reminded of the number of CDs I have that were released in the early 2000s with "enhanced content" that require an internet connection to access exclusive tracks and videos. Not one that I've tried works any more.

Thanks for this video Mat it’s something we nearly bought at Christmas for our 3 year old and it’s good to see what we would have been getting and I don’t think we would have been disappointed. We decided against it in favour of a yoto player which is a similar device but uses cards instead of characters which seems to make it cheaper (£8 a card on average rather than £15) It isn’t as rugged at this either though, I like how padded the Toni’s looks! That said the yoto player is holding up well and it’s teaching him to look after things from an early age. With regards to everything being cloud based I’ve hated recently how console games have been going this way recently. It started out that the online portion of a game would go dead when a new game in the series came out but over time the offline ‘main’ part of the game has been getting smaller and smaller to the point where now it seems that even that is now online server based.

That's a cool little device... but what I really want to know is where I can find that Cuba Baion remix. It slaps hard.

I thought the witch was Windy Miller at first 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

I've certainly seen these for sale in WHSmiths. Anyone else really disappointed that it wasn't Arthur Lowe reading the Mr Men story? Stupid toy..

Creative Mat is hilarious! The likeness is uncanny. Makes me wonder if the designers are in fact Techmoan fans. Certainly a possibility. I think you should keep that particular avatar. Could come in handy for future gags, or at least as background decoration for your set.

Very cute indeed. I love how there are wholesome, high-quality products out there, not just cheap crap :)

What a brilliant idea, it reminds me of the books on record I used to own when I was a kid. They're basically Amiibos but for literature.

Ha ha its a fantastic concept. How technology marches on .20 years ago we used fisher price talking toys But at 3.00 in the morning all of a sudden you are awoken by Hi I am Tony let's play some nursery rimes .

Cute! But yeah, would nicer if the data was actually on the figures, so there is no need to be dependent on servers... BTW: I really like the English story telling voices, the British English has some magic in it there 😀

Nice product! I, too, worry about the "back end" part.

Just Another Excellent TechMoan Video.

I want to get one just for myself! I work in higher ed and I’m probably the one lone Luddite who’s against cloud based IT so I totally understand your lament. No matter how good the service is, it’s just an extension cord that could be or is just waiting to be unplugged. That said I can see a a child who maybe isn’t just interested in books per se be attracted to the interactive engagement the device requires. It’s not just using your smart device to play an audible file etc. there’s also a level of thoughtfulness that makes it intriguing even for an adult. That said, my colleagues ask me why I sponsor content via Patreon. It’s a hard question that I usually answer with the standard “I like it”. The use of Cuba Baion, quips about who the narrator is and what a quid is made me giggle inside, it’s smart, thoughtful content reviews such as this (is the reason). Really enjoyed this review, and I only wish you continued joy in the work you do, given your own personal and world circumstances. Bests!

Fun review! If I still had little ones in the family, I would probably buy them this. By the way, what a blessing the Tefifon has been to all of us that it has gifted us with that wonderful song. :-)

A simple teardown here: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/09/teardown-toniebox-music-player/

So cute--wish I had a Granddad Mat;-) Or at least a Mat figurine. If I put him on top of my TV would he play Techmoan videos?

Thanks for another great and informative video, Mat. I echo the sentiment of being gun-shy buying into something which relies on an internet service which may go offline either temporarily or permanently at any minute. My home is specifically not a connected home for that very reason -- I don't want to rely on a remote server in order to turn my lights on or off, or to lock and unlock my front door.

I liked this enough to go look up the pricing for it locally (Canada - $400ish on Amazon, maybe significant seller markup for being niche, haven’t seen in retail stores). It’s a bit too expensive for me knowing that each of the figures is another $40 or so. If it was $200ish I might take the risk on servers and such but not at $400. We already have another device that uses a microsd card and an electronic optical pen with tiny stickers you put in a book that the kids can tap for recording and playback. Was bought in Asia so not sure about local availability, but can backup and swap memory cards and record multiple readers of the book.

This is definitely an interesting product. It's a shame the characters are NFC only. It'd be a lot better if they held the actual content in the figurine and could transfer it to the speaker box automatically, but that would be a technical challenge, especially for something that's meant for small children who will play with it by removing and replacing the figurines repeatedly.

This thing is brilliant. Like you, I remember story records, then tapes, then digital. I would have loved this as a child. That it’s cloud based is a concern.

The logo reminds me of a scene from Bad Apple! ( The skit based on al old PC98 game ) https://prnt.sc/ejcWy-yFyXEj I was thinking randomly yesterday of my childhood storybook records (while mowing the lawns of course) The only real turn-off is the fact you have to create a goddamn account (like with all these things) just to setup the unit and play the "canned" audiobooks. They are a little expensive too $15 AUD (£7) would have been more what I expected considering they are "collectables" and the entry cost of the unit is high (rather than the cheap printer and pricy carts model) Might have to do some man in the middle stuff and rip the streams too ;-)

Well done video, Mat. This is a new product that I would never have known about otherwise. I can't help but love an electronic device that could be thrown around without fear. I would have absolutely loved this thing as a child. I did a lot of escapist reading growing up, and I imagine myself recording Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Little House on the Prairie books onto it. Creative Mat: he does look like you (sans beard though 🙁) and his message to his imaginary grandchild was very sweet. You'd think he records his voice for a living. Perhaps he should do an audio greeting card side job, make a profit. That Cuba Baion remix - it's funky - I can't decide if I like it or not. Re: life drama - I'm having some drama at the moment myself, and not the good kind. Your video really cheered me up and took my mind off things - thank you. Please take care 🥹

People who say, "Just stream it" are obviously not old enough to remember that services can be cancelled. Look at Pandora which closed down in Australia, for example. But if the gadget works while the child is growing up, might be worth it.

I think the cost of each book/character at almost 15 quid is a pit expensive for a book, let alone a child's book.

I’m sure John Gruber of Daring Fireball would say “That’s a handsome looking Tonie”.

First thing that comes to mind - are the Tonie characters locked to one Tonies box? If not, what's to stop a Tonies character being passed on to someone else, maybe after recording the content through the 3.5mm socket? That would at least be one way to remove the issues of it being cloud-based. Also, based on the above, I wonder if the NFCs can be cloned. Lovely idea but I wouldn't invest in it for fear of losing my money! While checking details of the 3.5mm socket I saw their wireless headphones, they seem reasonably priced at £25 so I'll give them credit there.

Matt, I know you have a lot going on, but I think this video misses the mark. I didn’t know this device existed before, but reading other comments here and looking through the support FAQs on their website I think you missed a lot. Like, the 8GB of storage it has to work offline and the led color that tells you if it is downloaded or playing from the cloud. It sounds like if the service went out of business that it would continue to work for what you already owned. BTW, one of the faqs is how to transfer ownership.

A charming device. They should sell well. Thank you!

My niece has one of these. Although I didn't realise it was one of these until now as I thought it was a Disney thing. Having that tie in with Disney will hopefully prolong the life of the servers it runs on. That said, she's two and seems pretty adept at getting Alexa to play songs etc so not sure for how much longer this product will keep her attention.

So, now I watched it and I do share the same conclusions, including the weary feeling of what if it all comes tumbling down and the servers are shut off. I think the company is growing, as said it was a niche German product. I had trouble finding some stuff in English not so long ago. So I am optimistic. Then, it is a child product. I don't expect them to use it in 10 years time anyway. There is a couple of points I'd like to bring though. The recording can be done in many ways, basically as you may imagine any mp3 will do. So the grandparents record with the phone app and we upload it later. We also can copy any digital format into it eventually. I bought a Sony digital recorder and do as you say. Sometimes we read stories together, so their voices are also in the recording, some other times I do speak by myself. Another thing is that it is far from only audio books. Not only there are tones with music (I got my son one which is a dinosaur and it plays rock and metal songs as if it were a radio program) but you can get CDs with children music or things like the songs they sing in day care into it

I have a niece now, she's nearly 2. This would be perfect for her and I find the whole thing extremely charming. Don't get me wrong, I know you could just load up an old phone or something with audio books and buy a bluetooth speaker but a child isn't going to be able to use that; or at least not as easily as this. I am not a fan of NFC because a lot of companies use it as a brickwall to extra content *COUGH NINTENDO UNCOUGH*. But anything that gets a child invested in listening to audiobooks and self-discovery is fantastic. However, I could not agree more about the server. There are games I played as kid that seemed amazing, but now are pretty poor. But playing them now gives me a joy. It reminds me of the time I played it. Reminds me of the time I woke up on Christmas Day and my parents gave me a PS1. Me and my sister playing 'Jersey Devil' and struggling to get through the first level. If I wanted, I could go back and play that game. I am a huge advocate for preservation and all I see recently are games etc being killed or destroyed because they are server based. There are kids now, who play games like Fortnite etc, having the time of their lives and in the future, if EPIC decide that the game is no longer profitable they can just shut it down. Gone, forever. Don't get me wrong, I don't like Fortnite but it doesn't matter. I can still play Half Life 1 online and I can still listen to cassettes me and my sister recorded as a kid, singing awful 90's pop songs. Memories stored in the cloud are just that, a fucking cloud. Ready to float away forever. Leaving only a blank sky.

I used to listen to Ian Richardson reading Jungle Book stories on cassette tapes when I couldn't go to sleep. Guaranteed to work. My sister by comparison used to read to me Edgar Allan Poe stories to me when I was four years old.

This is why normal people have kids. So they get to play with toys like this

A thought: As it is server-based, could I record a new story here in Worcester and have it "loaded onto" (for want of a better description) to my Grandson's Creative Tonie in Lincoln? I.e., am I right in thinking the little 'minifigs' don't have to be here for me to record a new story for him 100 miles away. Am I reading that right, Mat?

First thing I was thinking as well being server based is it could all just disappear. However, perhaps overlooked, it appears to download the audio and store it locally. The FAQs for the box state for "Can I use my Toniebox on the the go? Yes! The Toniebox only requires a Wi-Fi connection for the initial setup of your Toniebox, when adding new Tonies for the first time or when loading new content to a Creative-Tonie through the Tonie-App." This is why you need to hold an ear to reset the customisable characters because it is caching them on the box, so needs to be told to fetch new content. Of course they might have a remote kill switch, but it would seem that if the service disappeared, those already downloaded stories would still work.

My parents bought one of these for my little sisters, they have been using it for 4 years I believe. The only flaw is that it’s not dog proof, new dog gave it a good tasting recently and it has a huge hole in it now. Still works! (The battery live has declined obviously)

Fascinating. My grandson, George is three in July! :-) I had exactly the same misgivings as you as soon as I realised it's server-based. This also means of course if George brings it to Grandad's house it would have to be reconfigured to our WiFi. I would LOVE to buy this and record stories for him. Decisions . . . decisions . . . Thanks for this, Mat. SB

The thing about the cloud service is always a worry these days. Also it will probably stop working for a day next time AWS goes down.

I've seen this one here in Bookshops and some larger Supermarket's toy sections and I always was intrigued by the technology. It's definitely way better than the very popular education/parenting method of giving your child a phone with YouTube kids running on it. Excellent little overview of the box and features. Might get myself one to see if I could be able to reverse engineer it and create my own Tonies. In any case, thanks for the review. I enjoyed it a lot, even if I'm 18 years old. It's still a very charming device.

Doesn't seem very futureproof if it's all cloud based...

I am especially looking forward to this one as I bought one for my eldest (3 now) a year ago. He beats it up pretty well but so far he likes it a fair bit. Funny enough, at the moment at least, he likes stories read by us and or family members (grandparents live far away and with all this covid visits are few and apart, especially for such a young child) Also children audio books have a good success The blank ones do basically allow you to do some playlist construction. It feels a weird mixture of "old" school and very much new ways. This is very famous in Germany, I mean this brand, but I am aware they are expanding to the UK.

I see you! 🤓😆😁