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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Long before DVDs, CDs and diskettes in magazines were a thing we had playable records as attachments. They were not real vinyl, I guess, but out of flexible plastic. The ones I remember were about the size of a single but square and also just one-sided.

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I had one, in a "Bloom County" cartoon book[1]. It was a flexible black record the thickness of a thick sheet of paper. It even had a spot to place a coin because the black plastic was thin and slippery. It played pretty well though and had two sides.

Someone is selling one on amazon with a decent image.

edit: see the comment with the art article about "Flexi-disc"

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Billy-Boingers-Bootleg-Dalton/dp/5551...

As an interesting aside in the "alternative record formats", when as a child I had the "mickey ghost chasers" book. It came with a little hand held box, which you'd put over mini "records" imbeded in the books[2]. You 'd hit a button and it would play audio. The underside was like a weird mini-upsidedown record player

[2]http://www.thisoldtoy.com/l_fp_set/toy-pages/800-899/800-tal...

again the best images I found are on amazon (see the orange circles on the page.

https://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Ghost-Chasers-Fisher-Price-Ta...

I wonder if that Fisher-Price player is related at all to the Panapic which seems similar https://youtu.be/quF45LvBtwA

Wow, it seems very much similar. They way you line up the player. Even the underside stylus and the poor quality audio.

> I had one, in a "Bloom County" cartoon book ... Someone is selling one on amazon with a decent image.

Both sides of that record are available on YouTube:

Billy and The Boingers, "I'm A Boinger" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxHAElC2FBw

Billy and the Boingers, U Stink But I (Heart) U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubgwVwK0SPg

Apart from flexi discs, the strangest example of a record I came across was Action Man figures in the late 60s and early 70s. They were a UK licence of GI Joe.

There were a few sets with added sound from 1" or 1.5" plastic, double sided records: https://www.vectis.co.uk/palitoy-vintage-action-man-boxed-fi...

Ars Technica described these about two years ago in "Forgotten audio formats: The flexi disc."

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/forgotten-audio-form...

The 1962 Seattle World's Fair had postcards that were playable on record players. Some of them are still sold today, I was gifted one a few years back.

https://mcphee.com/products/seattle-worlds-fair-postcard-rec...

One of the examples of Flexi disc.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160305-songs-of-...

Bandai tried introducing a new format in 2004 oddly enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW7XLBrBByA

Software was also distributed this way ion some magazines back in the day when cassette tape was used as a data storage medium.

My favourite method for distributing software was hapening during 80s on Czechoslovak television, there was some tech/computer show and at the end, during credits they play sound that when you record it (and was lucky) you’ve got some small game or something.

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