This Easter, Dorothy and I were taking a walk with the kids and we stopped in the local Walgreen's to get something, I forget what. While wandering around I stumbled onto these rather cute little toys. They float and when you touch the contacts on the bottom, the quack or ribbit a few tunes. I showed on to the kids in the stroller and their little faces lit up so we got the frog and the duck.
The kids, and Charlotte especially, really really liked the toys. Charlotte was the first to figure out how to light up the frog. (She really likes her frogys). Of course, this meant that the frog was the first to die. It only took a few weeks to do that, so Dorothy went back to the store to see if they still had some. She bought their last frog.
I did a search on the net and found the place that makes these, but they only sell them in large bins to stores and I wasn't ready to by 50 frogs. So, on a hunch, I started poking at the first dead frog and figured out how to take him apart. Once that was done, it was easy to see that replacing the batteries would be fairly simple.
So I did. What follows is a brief "how to" on fixing these little toys.
The kids, and Charlotte especially, really really liked the toys. Charlotte was the first to figure out how to light up the frog. (She really likes her frogys). Of course, this meant that the frog was the first to die. It only took a few weeks to do that, so Dorothy went back to the store to see if they still had some. She bought their last frog.
I did a search on the net and found the place that makes these, but they only sell them in large bins to stores and I wasn't ready to by 50 frogs. So, on a hunch, I started poking at the first dead frog and figured out how to take him apart. Once that was done, it was easy to see that replacing the batteries would be fairly simple.
So I did. What follows is a brief "how to" on fixing these little toys.
A view of the underside showing the 2 contacts. These can be set off by fingers, water or as Charlotte discovered, a babies tounge.
Removal of the innards. The 2 wires go the the speaker located on froggies butt.
Frog and Duck side by side. I wanted to make sure they were built the same.
Note that the pcb says "Duck-1" on the duck. It's interesting to note that the from board says "Duck-1" as well... The only physical difference is that the duck has 2 led's and the frog has 1.
The whole thing is held together by the 2 contact pins. The go up through the plastic and through the board where they are soldered on. Remove the solder and the pin comes out. Do both pins and you have access to the batteries.
A view of the 3 button batteries in the duck.
Remove the old batteries.
And do the same for Mr Froggy.
It took a bit of doing to find the replacement batteries, but here they are.
Now this little project is a great example of recycling. I saved some bits of plastic from the landfill and made my kids happy in the process.
The down side is that these things cost us $1.50 each at the store. The batteries cost me $2.00 each (or $6.00 per toy). The people who make these things make millions of them and must be getting batteries for $0.10 or so. At the rate the new batteries cost me, it would be cheaper to just buy a big bin of the toys all at once and dole them out as needed. What a choice.
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