The Toy

If you have been following Mira's blog for any length of time, you should know by now that she has a favorite toy and it is about as obscure as it gets. It's made by Tomy and it's called a 'Play by Light' toy. Sometimes it's called a globe toy or piano toy, but I can assure you, it is increasingly difficult to find by any name. Tomy released this piano toy for only one year, back in 1999. A few years back I contacted the company to see if they had any on reserve or sitting in storage, but they did not. Whatever sold originally is what there is available.

Unfortunately, we are on our last one, which is also on the brink of calling it quits. As you can see, Mira has gone through a few of these over the past 9+ years and we have Frankensteined them as much as I can.  We end up taking parts and pieces from the broken ones and piecing one together that will work. The problem is, Mira is pretty rough on them. When she is done playing with it, she will grab it and try to fling it off of her tray and onto the floor - the hardwood floor. We learned years ago, to strap it to the tray with a Theraband (resistance band) but she still manages every so often to get it off the tray. She has not only mastered the floor crashing technique, but also smacks the living daylights out of the toy sometimes that I swear it will shatter beneath her palms.

What fails on the toy is one of two things - the circuit board or the speaker. We have three toys where the board doesn't work at all - no sound, no lights, nothing. We have two more that the speaker has failed - you can get sound, but just barely. But if Mira can't hear it loudly, she won't play with it, so it is essentially worthless. It's not the speaker itself that is damaged, as I have replaced it on both of the damaged ones, but rather something in the circuit board perhaps that is routed to the speaker. I know absolutely nothing about small electronics, so fixing the board is beyond my expertise. Mira has broken off the occasional globe face on some of the toys and those are easy to replace. The board is not.

So this is a call for help! If you have a spare one of these toys at home that you are willing to part with, we would love to buy it off you. If you happen to spot one of these in a thrift store, grab it and we will buy it from you. We have been lucky over the years with snagging these off of Ebay, but they are increasingly difficult to find, Please email me at marcus1988001@yahoo.com if you can help!