Tat Tuesday.

Not too long ago I talked about the best Christmas I ever had. It was the year I got a Game Gear. A few years later I made a small mistake. I got caught up in the Virtual Boy hype. My parents, doing what all good parents do, broke their collective asses to get me the over priced piece of crap. As you can guess, by my calling it a piece of crap, the Virtual Boy did not live up to the hype. Luckily I asked for something else as well. This second item was much cheaper and really just an after thought. It was a Yak Bak. I loved it. It single handedly saved that years Christmas.

The original Yak Bak was  a small handheld electronic voice recorder. It was as simple as can be. The device had two buttons labeled "Say" which was the  record button and "Play" which as you can guess was the play button.  The Yak Bak was developed by Ralph Osterhout at Team Machina for Yes! Gear and was released in December 1994. It was originally intended to be a competitor for the Tiger Electronics Talkboy that came out a year earlier.

With the first Yak Bak becoming a success a follow up was inevitable. The second version was identical to the first except for a few small changes. The Yak Bak 2 had a locking mechanism. This prevented you from accidentally recording over a previously saved message. Another feature was the ability to warp the pitch of the recording. This was something that would be followed up on in later releases.

The Yak Bak WarpR took the warping ability and ran with it. The ability to alter the voice recording helped make the Yak Bak WarpR a more popular model than the previous ones. In fact the warp feature would become a staple of all future releases.

The Yak Guard was an interesting deviation. It was a simple motion sensitive alarm device. When activated it would play recorded alarm. Or it could be used to to play pranks on friends and families.

The Yak Time was a combination of the original Yak Bak and a digital wrist watch. It had one cool feature. You could set an alarm, that would play a recorded message, to go off when you wanted it to.

The Yak Wakky was the next upgraded version of the Yak Bak. It followed the Yak Bak WarpR. The Yak Wakky had the same abilities as the WarpR but added even more control. The Yak Wakky allowed you to control the pitch of the recording with light sensitive sensors. Depending on how close or far you and was.

Eventually the WarpR feature grew stale. Something new was needed. The Yak Bak SFX delivered. Not only did it feature the warp function but it also included 6 different sound effects that could be added to the recording.

The Yak Bender SFX was a combination of the Yak Bak SFX and the Yak Wakky. It blended the sound effects of the Yak Bak SFX with the light sensitive warp sensor of the Yak Wakky.

The Yak Bakwards was a simple upgrade to the Yak Bak Warpr. It added a new function. When the button labeled "yalp" was pushed the recorded message would be played backwards. It lacked the sound effects of the Yak Bak SFX but was cool in it's own way.

The Yak Maniak was the follow up to the Yak Bak SFX. It had the same features, minus one sound effect, but added voice effects. The Yak Maniak allowed you to cause your recording to stutter, echo, or warble. The effects were controlled by a trigger and a dial. The dial selected the effect and the trigger activated it.

The Yak Live was the last hurrah for the Yak Bak line. It added a small screen that displayed interactive characters. These characters would react to your message. I don't know exactly how that would work. I assume the character's lips move as you play your message and their faces would change based on the SFX, warping, and pitch changes you could make.

There where a few other versions of the Yak Bak through the years. Such as the Yak Bak Power Pen pictured above, the Yak Bak Ball, and the Ms. Yak, As well as  a number of simple rereleases like the Yak Bak Classic, and the Yak Bak 2K. Wikipedia also lists something called the "Yakkins" I have no idea what that is. It's funny to think that only 15 years ago something as simple as a digital recording could power an entire toy line. Nowadays most kids have portable video game systems, Smart Phones, Tablets, or Lap Tops. All of which could accomplish the same thing as a Yak Bak and so much more. But I still have fond memories of my Yak Bak. It was the first model released. It did nothing more than record and play. It was all I needed.

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