I had one of the original Fisher-Price records player as a kid, and I remember trying to understand how it made sound, by running my fingers under the tonearm and figuring out that the bumps on the plastic records were an encoding of the song. It's actually one of my earliest memories.

The new version completely misses the point, and I think it's perfectly rational to be pissed off by it.

When my own kid got old enough, I got him a music box that plays music from a paper tape. It came with blank tapes and a manual punching tool.