Touted as "Listen to music through your mouth", the TastySounds Audio Lollipop is all gimmick, and depressingly one-time-use. Even if you're handy with an exacto-knife, or your favourite decommissioning tool of choice.
These 'sweets' come 'toys' have just appeared in England, being sold by the Co-Op for £7 each (6.99 if you want to be picky).
On the box, we have the typical advertising, these things come in a number of flavours, this one claims to be "cola flavour" but its ingredients are mostly devoid of anything explanatory:
Isomalt, Maltitol syrup, water, acidity regulators (lactic acid), xylitol, natural flavour (cola), acidity regulators (sodium lactate), steviol glycosides, E163.
Basically a mixture of sugar-a-likes, and sweetener with a bit of colouring. Obviously one of your five a day if you're snacking on anything in the shops recently, the only surprise I have here is that it doesn't have aspartame in it. Is steviol any better? Up to you.
On the box is also further information that it's made in china, laughingly has a best before date of approximately a year, details of the two songs that are included in the lollipop (some have three) and a QR Code.
Now, I don't trust all QR Codes, but I checked this one out, and frankly, make sure that you don't. It links you to a random upload website where an mp3 file of the music is stored. Totally "legit", aka, not. What's more, we had a few of these sweets and the QR Code uses a different website on near each one. Wild. On the cola flavoured lollipop we have the following 'songs':
- EL Futuro by Fanta Nelida
- Keep on Pushing by Philip Peter Dudley Panton, Oliver Wilde, Tom Barnes
Not my first choice for listening, I'm sorry to say.
Part of me realised that this effectively encourages you to stick plastic in your face, too. Considering the concerns around microplastics now, this makes it even worse.
What's the concept behind these? Well it's meant to use 'bone conduction' to allow you to 'hear' the music while you suck on the lollipop. There's a button that you press which turns it on, it claims to use a CR2032 inside, and included in the box is a set of earplugs to help the effect.
I admit, I tried it out. The effect works reasonably well, your head is effectively used like a 'sound box' and depending on the placement of the 'end' of it in your mouth, you can hear it more strongly in your left or right ear, and or the whole head, in a way. The music quality is not amazing, but I suspect that's due to the hardware used in side.
The taste? Not great, inside the packaging does not smell well, and the cola, well, if you like Coca Cola, you'll be disappointed.
Speaking of which, what is the hardware used inside?
At least it didn't lie, specifically, it does have a CR2032 inside. It's a lithium CR2032 mind, and that red LED is PIERCING to the eyes.
This thing is rough to take apart. It is plastic welded together and I suspect I will accidentally destroy that wire in the future. Oh, of course, they've scrubbed the identity off the chip.
After a bit of research I discovered someone else has taken one of these apart too, and the design has changed since. Moving on from your little packet of lithium:
They also performed a good bit of research:
Pin 1 spk-
Pin 2 spk+
Pin 3 battery+ through a capacitor ?
Pin 4 gnd/battery- through a capacitor
Pin 5 gnd/battery
Pin 6 led output
Pin 7 pushbutton input
Pin 8 is connected to a "up" test point
-pandore60
An eagle-eyed person believes it to be a WTN6040-8S (https://www.wtsoundic.com/product/wtn6040-8s/ - archive link).
Proceeding with the tear-down, I made it to the end and promptly tore the wire. Simple fix though with a bit of solder, but I discovered that the "speaker", shall we say, still comes with its little white pull tab, revealing a sticky pad underneath. Considering I have two of these, I guess I have a bone-conduction stereo opportunity (though the frequency response is probably shocking). No matter, sitting it on the bottom of a mug treats the mug as a speaker, as opposed to using my head.
Good for a bit of curiosity, terrible for the environment, possible for a small project using an ATTiny and audio synthesis? Maybe I can have a bit of fun turning a piece of glass into a bluetooth speaker. If you see these in bulk for cheap, and you can easily rip them apart then they're good for the batteries and the 'speakers'.
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