"Step off, Ninja Mom. It's not a cellphone!" This line has haunted me since my youth. Almost disturbing hearing it again and not just repeating in my head.

You forgot the bootleg plastic phones that played a very compressed and short version of smile butterfly

you missed the classic two tin cans attached by a string

Beeping wasn't the ONLY way to reach Kim Possible. You could also call her.

My cousin and I had these monster high knock off texting things and they only really worked if we were in the same room. But we still used them but only to send each other ASDFMovie quotes which is like the most mid2000s thing I think I’ve ever done

As a kid I loved these kind of "social" toys, but I never got any because I didn't have friends and that was kinda of a requirement to be able to play lmao

concept: post apocalyptic society that has figured out how to extend the range of pda toys out of necessity because most cellphone screens have become too broken to use or fix

just throwing this out there: ipod touch killed them all.

I remember having a lot of fun at lunch with my friends on pictochat

Cybiko sounds like a Russian word trying to disguise itself as a Japanese word.

The Cybiko had an amazing homebrew community because of the sweet spot on pricing and the manufacturer actually supported it. I loved seeing all the new software (mostly games) that came out for it.

I had strict parents but I couldn't even convince them to get me a Firefly. Their paranoia was on a weird level.

Regarding the 'over' thing: You *always* say 'over' when using an SSB modulation, because you can't hear when the other side stops transmitting. There's no carrier to drop, so you are constantly hearing the background noise and just hear the transmission on top of it. When you are talking on FM, you generally don't need to over because the other side hears the end of transmission - either in the return of static, or in the distinctive sound of VOX or squelch flipping. You may still over in the case of really bad noise conditions.

OMFG I HAD THAT HELLO KITTY THING AND I WOULD SNEAK IT INTO CLASS AND GIVE ONE TO MY BFF WHO SAT LIKE 2 SEATS OVER AND WE THOUGHT WE WERE SO BADASS

When I was little, I thought walkie-talkies were freakin' cool. . . .Over.

Oh man, some friends and I all got Cybikos in like 5th grade, I totally forgot about that thing

You're wrong about Kim. She takes calls. It's in her theme song.

Moms in the 2000's: NO PHONES!YOU'RE TOO YOUNG Moms now: HOW DARE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET POST NOT CHILD FRIENDLY CONTENT?YOU HAVE TO BABYSIT MY KIDS!

"it has a VGA cable to connect to the internet" mate, thats a serial port, you would of used those back in the 90's since USB was still new and had yet to be adopted by the market. it would of been funny to see you try and get it working on a modern desktop with VGA! ha!

Zoomer: "Oh sick, just like Assasin's Creed." Millennial: "Oh sweet, just like the Matrix." Boomer: "Oh neat, just like a switchblade."

damn i remember as a kid thinking the cybiko was some nasa level shit

You didn’t mention the IM-ME wireless messenger toys by Mattel! Someone figured out they can open any garage door with it since they both operate on the same frequency

I remember a friend and I each got Cybikos when I was in 8th grade, I actually did send in for the MP3 player as well. The MP3 player worked okay, the main limitation was that it used SmartMedia cards which were expensive at the time, I believe I settled for getting an 8MB card for about $30 on ebay and then I had to downconvert songs to horrible bitrates to fit more than 2 of them lol But the texting was kinda fun for me and my friend at the time when we would have separate classes on opposite ends of a wall, felt futuristic

Gotta love nostalgia over merch that is so much more awful than all the modern conveniences. I still love old LCD games like the Dino Dex, Tomagachi, and Bio Bytes.

I remember seeing the Cybiko in "Big Fat Liar". Maybe I'm mistaken on that.

I feel like I'm one of the few people who actually really liked having a FireFly phone as a kid... 😂😅 I was still in elementary school when my family got my sister and I each one and I used to put it in my pocket on field trips in case I got lost or had an emergency. It was really useful during a time when most kids didn't have mobile phones at all, tbh! The only thing I didn't like about it was that I was constantly afraid I was going to bump the 911 button on accident! 😂

Me: Mom can we get Giogio theme? Mom: We'me have Giogio theme at hœm Giogio theme at home: 11:12

8:20 with the VGA cable? You mean the serial cable? I got a cybiko. I think I was an adult at the time. I used it as an ereader for a long time, and it had a surprisingly good speed reader program built into it.

for some reason youtube is literally refusing to let me watch this past a certain point near the end of the video lmao

Oof I had a Firefly and this video gave me anti-nostalgia for my childhood 10/10 would recommend (the video not the damn phone)

Vintage computer nerds: “it’s a serial cable dude”.

For april fools (or not) just cover the TI 84, 84 CE, and NSpire and talk about their games

11:29 wtf lmao

OMG! I remember that Chat Now commercial from back in the day! Use to watch it in between commercial breaks on KidsWB while I tuned in for Pokemon.

I had this odd purple thing that was exactly like that Hello Kitty one. I have no idea where I found the patience to type out words with that awful layout, and my confusion is worsened by the fact that I owned both of the communicators and only ever sent messages to myself.

2000s electronic gadgets were decent for play but not for messaging Cybiko it was a bad Game Boy meets PDA until Nintendo DS and PSP defeated the kids handheld electronics

Had a Cybiko as a kid! The only use I ever got out of it was the Christmas when I got it because my cousin also got one, so we chatted at my grandma's house. Otherwise, I never encountered another cybiko owner ever again. And yet, I'm still nostalgic whenever I see it get brought up.

"Step off, ninja mom" awoke memories deep inside me. Damn.

My dad discovered the Cybiko when I was a kid and bought loads of them on eBay to tinker with, because they could be had dirt cheap back then. This would’ve been within a few years of their commercial failure, so there were a ton of them in circulation new in the box. I think we’ve still got a bin full of them back home somewhere. I had one, my brother had one, we gave them out to friends since we had so many. They were great. I remember some truly wild and profane text chat shenanigans on the school bus. We had a CD-R (also from eBay, I think) filled with hundreds of programs and games for them. You could fit that many on a CD-R because everything to do with these things was minuscule in size - the internal memory was less than 1MB, but I think Lost in Labyrinth, the FPS featured briefly in the video, was one of the heftier programs at about 50KB. There were some great games too - plenty were nothing special, but some of them (like Labyrinth) had some great pseudo-3D graphics, and even many of the others looked pretty good, and that was on a 160x100 monochrome display with 2-bit “color.” They got a lot out of the limited sound capabilities too - some of these games had great sound design and even music; I remember Lost in Labyrinth featuring a real banger. They seem to have treated that one as a AAA title, which makes sense since it came preinstalled on the Cybiko - if I remember correctly, there’s a dedicated button along the top that runs it. That’s a lot of ranting to say that I remember these weird little things really fondly, and it’s always great to see them popping up places.

If I cant play Giorno’s theme on the Music Composer of my PDA I don’t want it 😠✨ PERIODT

i love this channel its just all about all the shit i saw on tv back in the day that my parents were never cool enough to buy me

When I was kid, around the time spy toys were getting big, me and my cousin convinced our parents to buy us these watches that had a little keyboard, and could transmit messages remotely. In theory.. In practice we pretty much had to have them touching for anything to transmit. Had a quick google, but can't find them at all.

The affordable smartphone killed all the other portable gadgets off.

"Jeralt of Riviera"

First off, love the nostalgia trips seeing as how I grew up with damn near all of this, second is be VERY careful when letting Audible sponsor anything. In case you didn't read the disclaimer all the way through, for a company that sells audio books, you cannot show a book in a video, ANY BOOK, say the word book, basically if you describe the product or mention a certain series like Harry Potter, they'll terminate the deal. A friend of mine accidentally said the word book twice during their promotion of it and the next day they got a termination notice as well as a massive bill for their "trial" and book they got. Just letting you know so you can keep your head above water and keep making this amazing trips down memory lane.

I ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE, THEY LOOKED SO COOL!

Does anyone else remember the device that allowed you to text a message and save it to a little charms? The gimmick was you could pass the charms to your friends so they could read them between classes. The charms could be worn as jewelry even? I think? I feel like it was by the same people that made that voice-activated diary.

I had a firefly. My mother was a paramedic and was at work a lot, so she gave us a firefly for emergencies. I was in charge of the firefly and my sister was in charge of the pepper spray. We wore both around our necks the entire time she was out lol

I remember finding a Firefly on sale at target during a road trip with my mom. She bought it for me but when we got home my dad refused to pay to set up the line bc he was so cheap so I could never use it as an actual phone and I have no idea what happened to it ;^;

omg i never had one of these but it would be fun to take it apart!

bless you billi man for covering every aspect of my childhood and making me forget my awful life decisions instead

I was born in '92 and this is all new to me, everyone I knew had a mobile by year 4 or 5, so around 9 or 10 years old. And after school we would text each other, or use the landline to talk, or use MSN messenger. If we ever saw a kid with one of these toy phones I'm sure we would have picked on them mercilessly.

I just want to say in the Kim Possible theme is says "Call me, beep me if you want to reach me" so beepers were not the only way to reach her 0:25

8:18 "...the only way you could connect is by plugging in with a VGA cable." so.... we're gonna just speed past that like it isn't important, then. a **serial cable**, maybe?

Keep these types of vids coming. it's so nostalgic, and educational to see what it was like in the early and mid 2000s. Awesome work :D

I remember begging my mom for a ChatNow, and both I and my best friend got one. I think we messaged eachother all of a small handful of times. I've since lost it to time and relocation but it'll always be tucked into my memory as something neat and fun to me.

8:17 It's not a VGA cable. VGA is only used for video signals. It's a DB9 or rs232 serial cable. It's missing a row of pins for VGA.

With the recent news of the Tiger handhelds making a "comeback" - I wonder if any of these things will see a resurgence. Everything old is new again!

The chat now advertisements had them taking pictures in color, but they took pics in black and white, witch as a kid I had felt lied to when I found this out after my brother got them.

If you never heard of the Cybiko, you clearly didnt watch enough Slime Time Live era Nickelodeon. Nick promoted the ever loving hell out of it, regularly giving them away as prizes on Slime Time Live, not to mention the kids in Big Fat Liar using it in the movie.

Cybiko was meant for tweens but advertised " Make Sexy Chat" on the box, above a picture of a young Asian girl. No words.

I already know this is gonna be good

Oh the Cybiko. I had 1, or 3. Two regulars, one I still have to this day. Same color as yours. The other I got in 1999. Then I got the extreme too. You could go truly wireless and get email and browse the web. Albeit required another Cybiko, a Serial link cable and a PC. It’s range was abysmal. But I recall on my trips to Nashville TN as a kid trying to discover other Cybiko users. There were never any. But I loved the open games and apps. Yes, those gum stick batteries die, and corrode. Mine did. Mine didn’t work when it was new that well. Also the charging port would break off. Young me didn’t know how to solder, so I used tape to pad the connector back to the board. It looked awesome for its time though.

Looks like you had slot of fun Billiam and that's what I enjoy about your videos. Keep having fun for us!

I need to see you and Ashens find a way to message each other with the Cybikosince you 2 are probably the only ones on the planet with one.

The early 2000’s were a very strange but amazing time (except for 9/11, that sucked) Over.

1:42 this awakened a deep slumbering memory within my brain that I didn't even know was there

I used to beg my mum for the hello kitty messenger thing all the time as a kid damn the nostalgia rush

Hey Billiam, I love your videos and especially the ones on monster collectors! I was wondering if you could do an episode on Dinosaur King? It doesn’t get much coverage but it was definitely part of a ton of childhoods, including mine! All I remember was the card game, but apparently the anime is on Netflix! Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see what you do ^^

Hey Billiam can you please cover the Megaman series of games and shows of the early 2000's.

I was OBSESSED with my cousins handheld IM thing that reminded me of a sidekick. It was only for IM though and I think you had to be logged in on her computer still to use it around her house LOL

The cybiko could relay through more than 200 units using an early form of mesh networking. Also, a Cybiko connected to a computer could act as an access point between the host computer's internet connection and other cybiko's in the network.. The software part of the business continued to make cellphone games long after the actual communicators ceased production. The Cybiko Xtreme was also usable as a digital walky-talky.

Time for the semi annual power rangers reminder at this point it’s more of an in joke between me and my friends but still ps good vid

Most of toy media devices have more buttons than most apps on a smart devices.

Lol I wanted like half of these as a kid!! Ended up living with the pictochat from the DS

OMG I LOVE THIS !! , I remember posting a comment on another video about you reviewing stuff like the chat now and you did a video on it . Thank you so much man :)

I kinda still wish there was stuff like this targeted to kids under 13. Parents these days expect technology to raise their kids. You also sometimes see children who don’t know any better posting borderline sexual content on social media free for grown adult strangers to see. I feel like if there were social toys for kids (with much better technology) that could teach them how to use smart devices while also having restrictions that don’t give them full access to the internet, they might be a better alternative than letting young kids do whatever they want on social media or sheltering them from it entirely. But alas, I think the smart device craze is too huge for these toys to ever make a comeback. I just hope parents can start being smarter about how much time they let their little kids spend on the internet and what apps/sites they use, while also not being too sheltering.

Please cover Mew Mew Power. With the Tokyo mew mew "return" (reboot), I'd like to learn how trash the old dub was.

I never had any friends as a kid (or at the very least none that lived directly nextdoor to me), so these devices would've been useless to me. Sidenote, is anyone else bothered when TV shows and movies show kids with walkie talkies that can communicate across town? They even did this in Stranger Things, this trope isn't dead yet!

Billiam your videos are so much fun and entertaining! I love your energy! Keep up the great work

i remember in fourth gtade wjen we got to take charter busses to the state capital, and on the form aboit the trip, it saod that pictochat wasn't allowed. Those were the days...

Can you talk about the vtech mobigo, it’s a early 2010’s toy for learning and I used to play this when I was younger (I’m now 10 and still have it)

2:16 at the exact second you hit the "call" button and the screen said "calling," my phone, sitting in front of me, lit up and vibrated and I got scared for a split second because I thought it was you

I got the first firefly for my 10th birthday. It was pretty convenient considering that I took the schoolbus that year but couldn’t actually go home. So if someone was late picking me up from the bus stop, I’d call to see how far they were. Then there were free minutes after 7, so I’d get to call my friends. Got a real flip phone the next year.

"Go to audible dot com slash (sponsor)" Okay that makes sense. "or text this to (random ass phone number)" Wow, that's still a thing?

11:12 you look so tired with everything in life

I had the hello Kitty one lmao you really brought back memories 😂💀💀

Pictochat was so great I remember me and a few friends constantly used it all the time I don’t understand why they got rid of it

It is not a vga cable but a serial cable the same stuff that is on the data pins of a usb cable, so you can get an adapter and connect it to a modern pc.

This reminds me of when I was little and would stand at my window with my DS, with either pictochat or mario multiplayer open to the "searching" status, thinking that maybe someone else would play with me. I live on a 200 acre ranch, no one ever came for reasons that are obvious now lmao.

I dreamed my phone turned into a Cybiko. Congrats Billiam, your videos have caused at least one cybiko related nightmare.

I love this 2000s toy analysis, it truly was a unique time for kids stuff!

I remember trying to convince my parents to get me a firefly...

Thank you so much for all videos you made. You are one of my absolutely best youtubers ever. :) Jsi borec.

OMG the videonow 😱 i forgot all about those lol and i had the chatnow to lol wow i just came across your channel. So glad I did. Can't wait to watch more.

Oh my God, I remember we had two of those Chat Nows and we legit got them for when my sister and I accompanied Mum with grocery shopping, in case we got lost I loved them

I never would hi old have remembered having a cybiko without this video

youre so underrated, dude. love your content.

Imagine you're living with only books and tv showing how cool soldier is, and see how these messenger are not weird

His hair looks so soft. I love him