2-XL
2-XL was more than a cassette player: he was my best friend on road trips when I was a kid. Some kids remember fighting with their siblings during those long family drives through nowheresville. Not having any siblings, I remember 2-XL’s programs. I was even involved in a car accident and I can still remember what 2-XL tape I was listening to (“Fun and Games”).
2-XL is a quasi-acronym for “To Excel.” He was invented by Dr. Michael Freeman, Phd. The first model of 2-XL came out in 1978 and was released by the Mego Toy Corporation, until they ceased production in 1981. During the original release period, Mego released two variations of the toy. Mego went out of business in 1983 which left 2-XL an essentially dead franchise until 1992 when Tiger Electronics brought 2-XL back with a complete redesign (commonly referred to as type 3, as seen above). For all intensive purposes, I will refer to this model by just 2-XL, since I did not own an original.
2-XL came before the age of portable digital media players so his 1992 program medium was cassette tapes (8-track tapes for the Mego versions). These tapes, when played in the robot, allowed you to listen to that tape’s program and interact with 2XL’s questions by pressing one of the buttons on his panel. Sometimes these choices were presented in the form of trivia questions so that you could test your knowledge of various topics. Other times they allowed you to make choices to change the sound of music or a story’s plot. Either way, they were a whole lot of fun and most of the programs presented a good deal of replay value. It all added up to hours and hours of educational entertainment and you can’t put a price tag on that.
Actually, you can, and it usually goes for $29.99.
I never collected all of the 2-XL tapes since I had grown past him before they stopped releasing tapes a few years later, but here are the 15 of the 43 confirmed program tapes that I have and what I remember about them.
“World of 2-XL”
This was the tape that came with the toy. You could always identify this tape since it was the only one that was white, as opposed to black. It was a sampler that contained all sorts of different things.
“Voyage to Outer Space”
“Storymaker”
This was essentially an audio version of one of those “choose your own adventure” books that kids read in elementary school.
“African Safari”
“Batman: Carnival of Crime”
“Batman: The Sizzling Scheme”
“Chaos in Jurassic Park”
“X-Men: Ghosts That Haunt Us”
“Food Facts and You”
“World of Science”
“Fascinating Facts”
“Sports World”
“Monsters, Myths, and Dinosaurs”
This was by far my favorite tape since I’ve always been a fan of all three components of this tape’s title.
“Amazing World Records”
“Planet Earth”