Sony kills Walkman RetroPod
p2pnet.net News:- Use old, bombproof consumer electronics to make durable retro cases for new, smaller consumer electronics … Make a case for an Apple iPod out of an old Sony Walkman.
Reads like an instruction for a high-school project, doesn’t it.
In fact, it was an entrepreneurial venture dreamed up by New Yorker John Young,
That’s exactly what he did, and Sony got its knickers in a twist over the results.
"The RetroPod was a handmade iPod case created from a vintage Sony Sports Walkman shell," says Young on his web page.
"It was big, heavy, and yellow, and only mostly waterproof. You had to open the case to get at the iPod’s controls. I had a great time prototyping it, learning how to cast Nerf in the process!
"After about a year of noodling around, I felt like I had a product I could sell. I convinced my friends Consuelo and Oriah to play the part of PBR-soaked Billyburg hipsters (instead of the decent, self-respecting punks they are in real life), and marketed it as a retro-kitsch ‘love it/hate it’ thing. The completed case was sold for a hundred bucks, but there was also a do-it-yourself kit with some neoprene, measure drawings, and instructions offered for twenty."
Young’s RetroPod was cast upon the web by various online media, as well as a" Dutch hipster zine called ‘Pulp,’ and he started getting orders from as far afield as Scandinavia, and Japan, he says.
Then came a missive from Sony’s law firm Cooper & Dunham which in part read:
"Consumers likely will be misled and deceived into believing that Sony is somehow connected with the iPod personal stereo when in fact it is not. Moreover, they will be misled into thinking that Sony is backward in its design of products and is going away from miniaturization, as the size of the tape player housing is quite large by today’s standards."
Young says you have to pick your battles in life, "and spending time and money to get a major entertainment conglomerate with a hardball reputation to allow you to continue selling your joke product didn’t seem that high on the list.
"So I immediately issued refunds and took the site down."
Retro In Peace
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See:-
web page – RetroPod Shut Down
October 17th, 2004 at 7:01 pm
God forbid someone re-use a piece of space junk…I wonder if Singer or Underwood would sue me if I made something out of sewing machine and typewriter parts…
October 18th, 2004 at 12:18 am
Just scratch out the trademarks.
Since there’s no sensible reason for trademarks
they are without limits or reason in application.