Toby Terrier
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A picture showing two of the Toby Terrier and His Video Pals videos. -
The Toby Terrier electronic toy.
Toby Terrier was a toy dog manufactured in the early 1990's by Tiger Electronics. The toy was designed to make various comments and remarks when placed in front of a television playing one of the select PLUS videos from the Toby Terrier and His Video Pals video series . In order for this function to work a specific cartridge that matched up with the video being played would have to be inserted into the toy. His collar contained a sensor that tracked what was going on in the movie. It was activated by pressing a button located below the sensor. The Toby Terrier video series was a comical and educational video series for kids, whose characters consisted of dog puppets. The video series itself was known as Toby Terrier and His Video Pals.[1]
How It Worked
Toby would wag his tail, bark, nod his head and say phrases such as, "Well, scratch my fleas!" as one watched the video when he was turned on. This was accomplished using VEIL Technology. The video fields would send out a data stream that is basically a bunch of one's and zero's that were received through Toby's neck collar. The video also never faded to a pitch black but rather a dark-gray to insure that Toby would not turn off during a transition. There were also small cartridges that contained different phrases for Toby to say during certain videos (known as "PLUS" videos in the series).