are they just phoning it in?

some traumas follow you from childhood to adulthood…

…and some cool stuff does, too.

personally, i’m not sure if this qualifies as either. granted, i don’t have any trauma memories associated with this item. i also don’t know if it really qualifies as “cool”, but we all know it. it used to look a little different, but now has been only slightly updated, yet still, inexplicably, has a retro rotary dial:

and costs under twenty bucks. unless, of course, you want this version. it runs between two and three HUNDRED:

the biggest difference? the bottom one connects to your cellphone via blue tooth, and even has a speaker phone component (that’s the extra red button you see to the bottom right of the dial). apparently they’re a bit harder to come by? it still rolls, and i figure the eyes still move looking at it? i’d be curious to see if there’s a size difference? it seems like if there’s not, and they just added electronics to the kid sized version, compared to how much they’re charging if all is the same size and chassis they’re really phoning it in on this one…

…yeah, i felt that needed to happen.