Toys – Page 3 – Fix It Workshop

Hubble bubble toy’s in trouble.

This bubble machine needed more huff and puff.

About a year ago, we bought an Early Learning Centre Freddy the Fish Bubble Machine for our daughter and it’s been a great addition to summer garden fun, as it unleashes thousands of bubbles per minute. It’s been truly bubble-tastic.

However, it’s decided to become a little temperamental of late when switched on. With good batteries and a full tank of bubble fuel, the machine would sometimes cough and sputter and generally be a disappointment in the bubble-making department.

The toy is shaped like a fish, like the name suggests and has a small reservoir for the bubble mix and a carousel of bubble wands operated by a motor which is ‘blown’ by a small fan inside, to inflate the bubbles to the optimal size.

The fault: The fan would sometimes, by itself, vary in speed, reducing the speed of the air though the bubble wand carousel, which would limit the quantity and quality of bubbles produced. Most disappointing.

The toy is held together by small Pozi-drive screws and the whole things comes apart in two halves. It gets a bit tricky inside as there are a few small components held in place using the internal plastic parts. After testing the batteries, I thought I’d start by testing the action of the on/off switch which seemed to click on/ off OK, but I wondered what the quality of the electrical mechanism was like. A quick test with the multi-meter revealed slightly variable resistances, indicating either damp or dirt had entered the switch, highly likely considering what the toy does.

FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Early Learning Centre Freddy Fish Bubble Machine

The switch is reasonably well protected from the elements, but I suspect it had become immersed in water, not really what the switch or toy is meant to handle. It’s not Ingress Protected Rated (IP).

The switch isn’t really designed to be repaired, but after a few minutes bending the small tabs holding it together, I revealed the switch contacts. A quick clean with switch cleaner and blue towel and the switch was working as it should once more. Once reassembled, the toy performed well once again and was soon filling the garden with bubbly magic.

FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch wipers

FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch

FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, in bits

FixItWorkshop, Sept’17, Freddy Fish Bubble Machine, switch inside

V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath book

This toy wasn’t singing at its best…

My daughter was kindly given a V-Tech Splash & Sing baby book and always enjoyed singing along to the music it made. It’s a splash-proof book which is suitable for bath time play, but not necessarily for complete submersion at 100 metres!

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book.

It’s a battery operated toy and has an on/off switch and volume control on the front. If the middle page of the book is squeezed in a couple of places, there are small switch buttons inside the book page itself, the corresponding the tune changes, relating to the picture on the page- I hope that makes sense.

The tunes on this book stopped changing with button presses and it became annoying to here the same tune constantly being played at bath time. Very annoying.

The casing is held together with a few Pozi-head screws and after a bit of wriggling, the pages came free from the spine (the bit with the batteries and on/off switch).

Upon testing, the wires between the pages and the spine had broken internally and no longer connected to the corresponding page buttons. They’d probably broken as the pages were turned over a good few uses.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, buttons.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book,wire repair.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, wire at spine.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book.

FixItWorkshop, Sep’17, V-Tech Splash & Sing baby bath time book, opening up page.

This toy is definitely not designed to be repaired. The only way to get to the wiring was to cut open the page, cut out the damaged wiring and replace it with something a bit tougher. The previous wiring was very flimsy and it would only be a matter of time before it broke, too soon.

I decided to use some thin gauge speaker cable, the sort you find in cheap portable radios for the repair. This worked really well and after some careful soldering and gluing of the cut-open page, the toy was ready for reassembly.

This repair probably wouldn’t cost in, in the real world, but I hate extreme built-in obsolescence and this toy showed examples of it.

Cost of the toy, circa £14.00. Cost of repair; my time plus some old wire I had lying about.

Slow Fisher-Price Mechanical Music Box Record Player

Repaired Fisher Price record player

Here’s a blast from the past: A mechanical toy, that’s really cool. One that brings fond memories from my childhood… I’m 38 as I write this (I’m 40 as I edit this- time goes so fast).

Strictly speaking, this is not a customer’s toy, but a family heirloom which had been festering in the shed for over 20 years. Consequently, it now wasn’t in great shape.

After dusting it down, we realised that records were playing intermittently and slowly at best and the problem seemed related to the rather cool winding mechanism within.

After dismantling the unit and giving the mechanicals a light service, the turntable platter turned freely once again. Our two (now three) year old daughter can now play with the record player as her mum did – very cute.

Enjoy!