Speak & Spell: The video game (sort off)
Remember when the Speak & Spell—yes, that educational toy from Texas Instruments—was the talk of the town, and the kid that owned one, the envy of his (or her) peers? Well, I do, and the memories are quite unpleasant, most of them involving a mash-up of grabbing hands and flailing arms, and one often very abused Speak & Spell.
Sigh. Our children have it so much better. No more overeager classmates trying to tackle your son or daughter just to get their hands on that shiny red and yellow toy. Speak & Spell, the toy, may be a thing of the past, as a good emulator for the PC, thanks to your handy browser and the Internet, is already available.
The Internet version isn’t as fun as the real thing, though. The reason for this is the lack of playable modes. Fortunately, young children, the original market for the Speak & Spell, don’t seem to mind. I showed the online version to my daughter, and she liked it. The only thing that matters to them is hearing the virtual contraption speak and praise them whenever they input the right spelling of a word.
It would be great if I could embed a copy of the online version of Speak & Spell on Re:Retro. But since I haven’t obtained permission from Jake Smith, the programmer of the emulator, a link to the site would have to do. Go try it!
For those in the dark about what I’m talking about, here’s a little background:
The Speak & Spell was created by Paul Breedlove, an engineer with Texas Instruments during the late 1970s. Speak & Spell was the first of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Read and Speak & Math. The Speak & Spell was sold, with regional variations, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and in Europe.The toy was originally advertised as a tool for helping young children to become literate, learn to spell, and learn the alphabet. The early Speak & Spell units were sold in 1978. Variants included the Speak & Read, which was yellow with blue and green accents and focused on reading comprehension, and the Speak & Math, which was grey with blue and orange and centered on mathematics.
Speak & Spell had five built-in learning games: Spell, Say It, Secret Letter, Mystery Code, and Word. Spell is the classic word spelling game, wherein the participant must spell ten words after hearing them “spoken” by the unit. The Speak & Spell also had the ability to expand its vocabulary using expansion modules that plugged into a slot near the battery compartment. One such expansion module was a tie-in for the toy’s notable appearance in the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and asked young spellers to try such words as “geranium” and “extraterrestrial.”
