Meet 2-XL

An innovative toy that I remember from my childhood.
On
March 03, 2008
This is going to be a first for me. This is a little article about a toy I remember from my childhood. Let's see how this turns out.


The year is 1992, and I have experienced this little toy known as 2-XL. He is said to be the smartest toy robot in the world. 2-XL was a little robot that talked to you and ran on an audio cassette tape. This was a very innovative toy, because he had these four little buttons that he'd let you press throughout his programs. Each time you run through the program and you press different buttons at different times, he will give you a different response. Throughout each tape, 2-XL asks you questions (either multiple choice or true/false questions), have all these other fun activities for you to do, and every once in a while, tell you a joke.


2-XL had all these different programs that ran on different cassette tapes. Each 2-XL toy came with a tape called "World of 2-XL", which basically was an overview of 2-XL and some of the fun stuff he has to offer. Each 2-XL program had a different age level. "Ages 4-7" indicated that the program was made specifically for young children. "Ages 4-9" indicated that the program was for kids of a wider variety. "Ages 7-12" indicated that the program had some harder questions made for kids who are more advanced in learning. Here are some of the other programs that 2-XL had that I recall playing:

Storymaker is a program made for little kids to learn about their favorite fairy tales and give them a chance to put together their own stories (some narrated by 2-XL and some narrated by real princesses).

Monsters, Myths and Dinosaurs was a program that talked about famous scary monsters, infamous myths, and dinosaurs. This program even let kids interview with a wicked witch, a cave man, and even Count Dracula. I don't know why, but the interview with Dracula always scared my little brother.

World of Animals is pretty self-explanatory. This program focuses specifically on animals and insects as well as their importance on Earth.
Amazing World Records asked questions based on the Guiness Book of World Records as of the day it was released. This was a pretty interesting program, as in this one, 2-XL scores you on each question you get right. The harder the questions are, the more points you earn. There's no penalty for wrong answers aside from no points.

Fun and Games is just a program for preschool children to have fun with music, dancing, and all these other great games.

The Sizzling Scheme I would say is a popular program for most kids who had a 2-XL. This program is based off of "Batman: The Animated Series". It's basically an episode of "Batman", and throughout the story, you press 2-XL's buttons to decide what should happen next in the story.

There were other programs out there, which I don't recall owning. Some of which included:
Sports World
Fascinating Facts
Planet Earth
African Safari
Food Facts and You
Nature and You
Oceans of Fun
Voyage to Outer Space
Say Hello to Famous Folks
Music Maker
Mighty Morphing Power Rangers
X-Men: Deadly Games
Rippley's Believe It Or Not



If you've ever owned 2-XL in the early 90's, you gotta admit he was a pretty cool toy. After doing some research, I discovered that there was an earlier version of 2-XL released in 1978 which ran on 8-track tapes, and the guy who did his voice was Michael Freeman, the same guy who voiced the newer 2-XL. Who knows? Maybe in some future time, they'll re-release 2X-L again and have him run on Blu-ray discs! I really don't know what else to say, so I'm just going to conclude by listing some funny memories I remember with 2-XL:


1. On occassions, after 2-XL tells a joke, he asks if you thought it was funny. I always said "No", just to hear him whine back.
2. There were a couple times when he sneezed when giving the choices to a question, and he always sneezed when he was about to give the right answer, which sort of gave it away.
3. There were also some times when somebody would bang on his door or ring his doorbell and sort of interupt his program just to tell a funny joke. I mean, where is that door of his?
4. The way he pronounces things is actually kinda funny like he says "any-malls" instead of "animals".
5. The only time you're allowed to press his buttons is during his computer sounds. I sometimes pressed his buttons otherwise just to see how I can mess up the tape.
6. He'll tell you when the tape is over because he's getting tired. If you leave him on for a while, he'll keep telling you to rewind his tape, but eventually, an alarm will go off and continue until you stop and rewind the tape. Quite a way to get your attention, if you ask me.


I guess that's all I gotta say about 2-XL. Sorry about the lack of pictures, but it's all I can find. I look forward to reading your comments.
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