The Panasonic Toot-A-Loop - A 1970s Transistor Radio Pop Culture Icon - National Sing-O-Ring
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2024
- Nothing screams 1970 like the Panasonic Toot-A-Loop. The National Panasonic Sing-A-Ring, as it's known outside the USA, or R72 has become an icon of pop culture, along with its cousins the ball and chain radio and the TNT Dynamite 8-track player. I found this particular one as a nonworking piece on eBay recently and had to have it. It's definitely a pop culture icon!
In this video, we will go through the history and features of this vintage piece of electronic nostalgia, as well as get it working. If you want to skip past the repair section of the video, check out the timestamps below:
0:00 Introduction
0:48 History of the Toot-a-Loop
1:36 A Look Around
2:30 Repair
11:40 Conclusion
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#panasonic #vintageradio #vintageaudio #popculture #electronicscreators #vintageelectronics #electronics - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Knew of this radio but my family was fond of the Radio Shack "flavor radios" in various pastel colors. It really made things stand out until the era of the 80s gray and black boxes took over.
My mother was farm laborer in the 70’s and 80’s and carried one of these with her for years. She loved it because it was comfortable to carry one tied to her waist as she worked. She was never happy with any of its replacements once it boke down. I’m familiar wth its innards because I took it apart as a kid when it finally broke.
The South African model was also sold as "National Panasonic" and was FM due to the fact that the country's regional Top-40-style stations were on FM.
Interesting. I was more of an 80's kid... but I do remember seeing all sorts of interesting transistor radios from the 60's and 70's... before the boom box craze.
I have 3 Ball and Chain radios I got in the last year. I have green, blue and white ones. All I need now are red and yellow to have a set. I would still like to get a Loop and the TNT 8 track player for my collection!
Hello from Finland, nice video!
Thanks for watching!
Yep, my sister had one of these when she was young. Iconic radio! BTW you probably shouldn't spray contact cleaner into tuning capacitors!
in brisbane australia , that thing would have been set to aroung the 7 on the tuning dial - for 4KQ
Wow! I forgot all about these. I had one as a kid. Mine was orange if I remember correctly. Cool find. Yeah, Panasonic was big in the industry in the day. Their TV's and other video related equipment were very good, but they seemed to die out. Their audio equipment line was branded as Technics. Same parent company. of Matsushita.
Before my Toot-A-Loop, which I got for my birthday in January 1973, i had a Panasonic pocket radio small enough to fit in a kid's shirt pocket. I shared a room with my two older brothers and in Christmas '74, Santa left us a rather nice Technics stereo setup for our room. We thought we were such hot shlt...
Novelty radios were a big thing back then. Most of those were cheap junk or near that, but Panasonic hit the bullseye for cool styling and had a quality product to boot. However this one was a bit of a stretch as the concept was a radio you didn't have to carry, but could haul around like a bracelet keeping both hands free. Anyone who's tried that quickly found them too heavy and too bulky for that, and if carried by hand you couldn't get a comfortable grip on them. I have most if not all of the Panasonic novelty models in my collection (though not all the different colors you could get) but I never tried to see if this one works. All is in storage for now but I will be digging them out for sale sometime in the next year I hope as I no longer have time or space for them.
My Toot-A-Loop dangled from the handlebars of my Schwinn Sting Ray!
Maybe the Aussies associated the word Toot with fart. I know that we sometimes refer that term to flatulence as well.
My brother had a red one exactly like this (Australia). It was kind of odd, and tinny. The sound was on par with most "pocket" transistor radios of the day, ie pretty bad.
I still have mine but I don’t think it works (I’ll have to check). But I’m really interested in trying to find the commercial. I can still sing it, but I can’t find it anywhere. If you find it, please let me know.
I was actually looking for it when making this video. I'm going to keep looking.
Never heard of that thing. the design is very 60's / 70's. doesn't looks like very practical, seems like it doesn't sound that well, but as a vintage antic piece of tech used for deco is would perfectly do the job!
They were light weight but a tad heavy to wear as a bracelet. But you could loop them through some belt loops, handbag straps, and they fit perfectly around the handlebars of a kid's bike. All those small transistor radios back then had horrible sound quality, but it didn't matter to a 1970s kid, whom this was marketed to.
Come in handy if ☢
I’m glad it’s a color am radio, I hated having to listen to B&W am.