This is the second of two non-LCD pieces on this site and, like Dracula’s bank, are here because they were among my favourite childhood toys and I was compelled to share after finding them on eBay after a long search!
In 1978 my family went to Fiji on holiday and it was there I discovered the laughing bag which, it has to be said, blew my eight-year-old mind!
It was a record player in a bag and, with only a single C battery, would play over and over again at the press of a button. Naturally my parents grew tired of it long before I did and I imagine I burned through a mountain of batteries to hear 20 seconds of Joker-style laughter.
Not that that’s all there was; like I said it had a record player in it and so it came with extra records! Not only was there the laughing record (incidentally all records were double-sided and almost all had different A and B sides) but I also had the choice of crying, coughing, baby crying, cow mooing and bird tweeting – all of which were hilarious to me. Baby in a bag – classic!
Like all boys who grow into teenagers, the lure of wanting to find out exactly how it worked meant some misplaced screwdrivering, plastic bending and parts loss as I delved into the player’s innards so unfortunately it was binned sometime in the early 1980s.
Technology replaced the record player and, while you can still find laughing bags now – an abundance of them in fact – they are generally button cell-powered with no moving parts and the laugh track recorded onto something made of silicon.
While my laughing bag record player was consigned to the landfill all those years ago, I still kept the records in the hope that one day I’d be able to play them on something else. Unfortunately my search for a replacement online was kind of fruitless until I came across an eBay auction from a Scottish bloke whose mother used to run a joke stall at a Glasgow market in the 1980s.
Jackpot! Won the auction and hunted out my old records to give them a spin once again.
But wait. While this replacement unit seemed identical to the much-loved toy I remembered, it had some pressing differences.
Where there used to be an eyelet and flap to open the record player and change disks there was now only the holes where these things should have been.
And this hadn’t been done by the bag’s owner (this was a NOS product) — it had been done in the factory. Extra holes had been made and filled with melted plastic to make the unit impenetrable. Well, impenetrable for an eight-year-old, not an adult with a thirst for history!
Out comes the dremmel and a likely sized bit, and the melted plastic is gone, revealing the player in all its glory!
And you know what? All my old records played great in it! Interestingly the flip side to the record that was in it, was another laugh track which sounded more like a female, possibly a child, and probably Asian. Intriguing.
Another toy I had which I can’t even find reference to on the net was a trumpet with a similar record player but was operated by blowing it – no batteries. The trumpet suffered a similar fate to the laughing bag but even earlier, so was amazing I still had the record from that (it’s the blue one) and the Caisson Song once again came back to life too.
Most surprising was the ‘non’ opening back to the unit though; back when I got my original it’s unlikely these things would have been being pirated in great numbers since there wouldn’t have been much money to be made.
Unlikely that this new unit was a knock-off either with it’s Made in Japan and patent pending inscriptions, along with the brand name, AICO, which is a well-known novelty manufacturer in Japan.
I can’t tell for sure, but aren’t losing any sleep over it – well, unless I have nightmares from the creepy Joker voice doing the laughing!
Thank you for sharing this, I had this toy too (only Joker laugh), I never knew the disk had a B side 🙁 – now is too late … :((. Thanks.
Well…you could always make an offer 😉
Hi there ! This little marvels were manufactured in Japan by OZEN TOYS firm ( yours is also manufactured by OZEN, check carefully the back ). The OZEN’s were the best built and most sold ever. Yours is not a fake but an original, but they sometimes had small differences in the front button and in the back disc and battery access, sometimes a screwdriver being required for safety reasons and sometimes not ( talking dolls had an easy-pull opening for changing the doll sound, as Mattel wanted to sell extra mini-discs ). In fact, OZEN BOXES ( this is the name of the device ) were patented in 1961 and used for an incedible number of talking toys : Mattel’s talking dolls, Janex Corp. used OZEN boxes for their famous talking alarm clocks ( Batman, Superman, Peanuts, alarm clocks…). Also NEW BRIGHT TOYS used OZEN for their bump-and-go talking robots such as Howard, Toby, Robotron,Magic Mike. In certain cases they were specifically produced with different shapes on request, but the main case was the same : Mattel made a series of “SMURF – LABORATORIES ) a sort of portable-talking-smurfs-playset were the mini disc was under the Smurfs action figures : so you could place and insert the figure on a platform ( OZEN player hidden inside ) and each figure would say 2 different phrases ( the disc had two paralel recordings on the same side of the disc, the player would casually choose one of the recorded tracks each time it would be put in the slot and the player would start…. The double track system was used also for the New Bright Robots, the robot would sometimes speak and some other time make a space sound, depending on you….luck (? ) Cheers from Italy – GUIDO
Awesome – thanks for the background! I’d love to see more of the OZEN boxes.
I just acquired a Ozen talking doll and am now searching for more disks to use. Are they available anywhere?
Sorry – I’ve never seen the disks anywhere and think I was pretty lucky to get the ones I did with the original laughing bag I had. It would be interesting to know what disks were ever made for the Ozen toys at least to catalogue them somewhere so you’d know what was potentially out there. Good luck – if you ever find a stash of them let me know; also fire through a pic of the doll – sounds interesting!
My Laughing Bag has a ‘GEN’ trade mark and was made in Japan wuth a US patent number. It looks similar to the one illustrated, except for the back panel which is significantly different insofar as it doesn’t have those extra holes, filled, or unfilled and doesn’t have that protruding ‘button’ in the centre.
I’m curious to see if there is another recording on the other side of my disc, but I don’t want to break the plastic clips holding the disc in place.
Unfortunately you might have to do just that, since you can’t disassemble the unit from the other side. It’s quite a risk just to hear the other side of the record though (especially if it turns out to be the same audio track)!
Yes the other side has a recording. When I was young I had one and opened it.
The recording is about people talking japanese.. I wish I knew what it meant..
i have a ozen magic bag toy just like this with 2 discs and i want to sell it.i am from (Romania Europa)
Cool, send me a pic — what do you want for it? Is it working, and what are the sounds on the records?
facebook?whatsapp?
Send from the contact page, I look forward to seeing it!
Buna Daniel,
Sunt interesat de acest aparat daca il mai ai.
Sunt din Craiova,
Astept raspuns pentru a te contacta.
where can you buy this Ozen voice box? Have a doll needs voice box replaced
Hi, I’d recommend finding a similar doll with working voice box and swap them over. I don’t think the Ozen boxes were all the same size (a doll would be massive to fit the box that’s in my laughing bag) so not only do you have to find a working one, but one the same size too. Good luck!
Where can i buy ozen voice box [ part no – 793915 ] ? please help me . I ‘m from sri lanka.
where can one buy these from? i have been after one for ages
please advise
thank you
nick