Sony Walkman

There’s a photo of me when I must have been five or so and we visited an uncle who had a walkman that I could try out. The photo shows that I was amazed by that machine even though it was almost as big as myself.

Many years later I finally got my own walkman. It was by Sony, and was made in the time when the buttons in Walkmen were still mechanical but they already managed to have auto-reverse. An extra cool feature of my Walkman was that it had a built-in display with a clock. I think I already stopped wearing watches back then, so this was quite handy.

Obviously I loved the toy and used it a lot. But at some stage in the mid 1990s it just stopped being able to play tapes properly. That was a shame, but I soon got a very cool and thin new Walkman to replace it.

One thing that I really liked about my first Walkman were the earbud headphones. Of course they had the clever asymmetric design and they just fit my ears really well. I continued using them for a number of years after the Walkman broke but eventually they died a sad death when I rolled over them with my desk chair. Tragedy!