Video makers torture kids with unexplained Walkmans

A couple of YouTube video makers are back at it again, driving kids crazy by putting an old piece of technology in front of them and recording their reactions. This time, the Sony Walkman, the portable casette player that debuted in the late 1970s and eventually gave way to digital music players like the iPod.

The kids poke and prod the devices, and nope, it’s not a walkie-talkie, as one young man guessed.

The last time the Fine Brothers’ work caught our attention, they were plopping rotary telephones in front of kids.

I actually still own a Walkman myself and dusted it off last summer when our family was taking a long vacation drive from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. I dropped it in the backseat along with a box of tapes and our two teens showed only the mildest of interest in the gadget and even less in the music (classic Smiths and Midnight Oil, among the albums).

Maybe I should have broken out the Discman instead.