Listen here carefully. It seems that nearly everybody and many tech companies are so busy trying hard to be like everybody else, that they forget to be themselves...but not Sony. In fact, it seems they sometimes Sony go out of their way to be different..some might be a bit weird at times…..and I respect that. Who wants to be like everyone else anyway.

In this video, I've done my best to find ten weird and wacky Sony gadgets, some of which might leave you wondering, "Why did they even make that?" Get ready to be amazed and possibly even confused as we dive into the strange world of the one and only Sony.

Rice Cooker 1946 ( Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo aka Tokyo telecommunications engineering company)

Number one…It seems fitting to start with the world's first Sony product. Now, this product wasn't Sony-branded, as the company back then was called Tokyo Tshushin Kogyo.

So we now know Sony as a company that makes PlayStation, cameras, sensors, tv's, movies, music & of course audio devices to name a few… but strangely, Sony's first product was designed to make rice.

It consisted of a wooden tub with spiral electrodes at its base inside. The idea was that the wet rice would complete the electrical circuit causing it to heat up. And once the rice had dried, the circuit would break, automatically stopping the cooking process.  Sony did make a few prototypes of this product…but often, the rice was overcooked or undercooked. 

They even thought it could be converted into a bread maker…that didn't work either. So what they then did to make use of the components was to get the ladies in the company to weave the wires into pads. Effectively turning them into heating pads and selling them in the street market. I tried some pictures of these online, but… It seems like they're tough to find these days.

And before we move on to the next one. I'm glad Sony went with the tech approach even though the product failed. Because of some of the other ideas on the table at the time off on a completely different tangent. For example, one of the ideas at the time was to lease some land in bombed-out Tokyo and build a mini golf course. Another was to make and sell sweet bean paste cakes. 

Who knows what the company could have looked like had they gone that route. And for those of you who are interested to see when the success began. It was when the more senior co-founder of the company Masaru Ibuka on the 7th floor of a bomb-damaged shop in downtown Tokyo, invented a modification device for a medium wave radio that would allow to pick up shortwave. And he made this with parts he bought off the black market…Kind of like a Japanese Tony Stark…he made this 'In a cave with a bunch of scraps.' 

And the timing of this invention was perfect as the shortwave radio was illegal before this time. Anyway, let's jump forward around 37yrs. 

Sony WM10 Walkman (1983)

If you're a Sony fan, let me know in the comments & Let me tell you something you likely already know. The Sony Walkman was the product that took the company to the highest of highs in the 80s… but did you ever hear about the Super Walkman…codename WM10 & you know, Sony loves a good codename. Only 4 digits back then…much simpler times, I guess.

Anyway, what made this one strange but genius was that it was as small as a cassette case. And in fact, the official Sony advert shows them placing the components into a cassette case. At the time, it was the smallest walkman ever…maybe it still is. Let me know you know if that's still true or now. 

So here's what is weird about the Walkman WM10. It was so small in it's resting state that it couldn't even fit a cassette in it. But here is where innovation comes in. It extended outwards to fit a cassette when you were ready to listen. And this is just cool.

What amazes me is this mechanical gadget runs on a single AA battery…but check this out. Here's a little insight into this innovation. The 1.5V was not enough juice to run all the components, so Sony added a step-up DC to DC converter to boost the power. 

Are there any modern audio devices today that can run on a single AA battery?… Let me know. Anyway, Don't ask me about the playback time on WM10. I don't imagine it is that spectacular by today's standards. And let's be honest about the Sony Walkman WM10. It's fair to say this is one of the greatest retro audio devices out there today! That expanding mechanism is just so unusual. You gotta love it.

Rolly speaker (5/10) 2007

Let's fast forward from the dark ages, around 24 years, to 2007. When Sony released a speaker that only Sony could come up with. I'm guessing now, but at some point, a bunch of the Sony execs were around the boardroom table, and someone put out a suggestion. And said, "Do you know what people need that they don't realise that they need… a dancing speaker!" It sounds like a sound idea, right. Well, someone thought so because Sony Rolly was born. A small egg-shaped speaker had rounded wings and LED light strips, 2GB's of onboard storage and a BT receiver. And it could roll around. It also had an accelerometer and could be used in the upright position. And the onboard controls were quite unique too. The discs could be twisted so you could adjust the volume and skip tracks

The rolly was pre-programmed to dance in time with specific tracks. You could download dance routines to its onboard storage. And if it didn't recognise the songs, it would just improvise. (awkward dancing) I must admit the Rolly is a strange device, undoubtedly unique…and looks pretty cool & full of life. It is certainly more visually entertaining than most Bluetooth speakers these days…but maybe just a little too ahead of its time and a little bit too strange for the world at the time…as fate would have it just a couple of years later, the Rolly was never going to dance again… of the factory conveyor belts…maybe it's worthless feet had got no rhythm… OK, that was a bad joke. I take it back. I should have known better than to cheat a friend.

Sony Aromastic (6.5/10)

So Sony nowadays is deep in the sensor game. Some would argue that they are the best! Particularly when it comes to smartphone sensors. But here's a strange turn of events: whilst brainstorming ideas, a team at Sony realised that we have products to look at, to listen to, to touch, and to make food to taste…you know what? We don't have something to smell… 

I read that one of the designers described this as a kind of personal headphone experience…for your nose. Yes, this sounds crazy. But smell what Sony is cooking here.

Yes, the Sony Aromastic. A compact personal aroma diffuser. Now there was a lot of emphases that although the Aromastic looks like lipstick Sony did their best to make this non-gender specific product…Once again, Sony is ahead of the times there. Hit me up with some non binary emojis in the comments… I'm told that's a real thing now.

Anyway, in the Aromastic was a special 5 aroma cartridge, and you could twist the device to switch between smells. If used correctly, this pocketable lipstick-smelling device could help change your mood. And this is a strangely innovative idea. But, It could work. I know when I smell Coffee it reminds me of the morning…and the 24Hr trip to Amsterdam I went on with Sony Audio to check out some soundbars. I did film a VLOG with the Xperia 5iV. Link at the end.

And the smell of popcorn reminds me of the cinema, and smelling that could put me into the mindset to watch a movie. Like the greatest movie ever made starring Nicholas Case, Willies Wonderland. OK, all jokes aside, that film is brilliant & Aromastic was a good idea. But unlike a bad smell, it didn't hang around for long.

Sony E-marker (2000) 5/10

Let's rewind a little bit to the turn of the century. There was great uncertainty in the music industry, a strange time. And Sony is a big player in the Music industry was innovating as always. And strange times calls for stranger solutions.

The problem Sony was trying to solve at this point in time was how we get people to go back to paying for music instead of sharing it amongst each other online using apps like Napster. And that's when they came up with a 20-dollar keyring called the Sony E-Marker. Now, I have yet to own one of these. I looked it up and from what I can gather is that the way the E-Marker would work was that you would pre-program it with information on the radio stations you listened to…and when you heard a song you liked on that station. You could create an E Marker by clicking it. You could create up to 10 markers on the device.

Then when you got home, you could plug it into your Windows 98 PC using the USB A connector and the E Marker would link you to a Music store where you could spend your hard-earned money on a physical CD or Cassette tape or a Vinyl…but you know what, I think a lot of people back then probably thought ( that seems like a lot of work ) Napster was easy & it wasn't long before the man the myth the legend, and captain of an American tech brand, Steve and his iPod came along… the world changed forever at that point, and the Sony E-marker was left in the dark… but you know what I think it would still make a really cool retro keyring though… let me know if any of you guys own one of these.

Folding tablet P ( 2011 )

Alright, let's jump forward a decade. 2011 was the year that game of thrones premiered. It doesn't feel like that long ago. But this was the year that Sony launched a folding tablet…Now I know when you look at the tech landscape today, everything is flipping & folding, phone's tablets, laptops… my wallet is folding up and dying. 

But back then, a pocketable tablet was an idea ahead of its time. This sunglasses-case-looking device was known as the Sony Tablet P. It had two displays that weren't actually that close together…It had bezels thicker than my eyebrows and TFT display tech, which wasn't that good. It did have some positives, though. It had LTE connectivity, a removable battery, a micro SD slot and some apps designed by Sony to make the most of both screens.

However, from what I'm told, the user experience wasn't great back then on the Android Honeycomb interface, combine that with the disappointing displays, and it was hard for a lot of people to get on board with this one…even the Sony fans like up with our rose-tinted glasses. See what I did there? because I said it looked like a sunglass case. 

D88 discman (4/10) 1988

Alright, let's go way back, back into time. 1988. Remember the Super Walkman that was too small to fit cassette tape. Well, Sony went and did it again 5 years after super walkman. This time with a CD player. The world's smallest CD player… so small it cannot fit a regular 12 by 12 cm CD inside it. It could play them, and when you played regular CDs on it, it turned it into a Zombie killing compact disc saw. OK, it wasn't dangerous…, but it did rotate the discs at 780RPM, and there was the risk of obstructing the disk that could ruin the disk or the device. but thats besides the point.

Back then there was such a thing known as CD singles that were around 8 cm in diameter. Which could play in the proper closed position. There was even a dust seal so. Presumably, you could put this in your pocket and play.

But CD singles were rare, making this quite a niche product…because the purpose of the walkman or a Discman was for it to be carried around… that's why this one is a little weird. I get it, though. Sony gained a lot of exposure from being the world's first to do things…they did indeed make the world's smallest Discman, but who was this really for? I doesn't matter who it's for. It's a legendary device in my book. It could run off mains, it had a detachable lithium-ion power pack, it had a wired remote control, and Sony wired earbuds, and Sony branded carry case.  And if you don't think is awesome… What's in your head?

Sony Pocket Air

So you know some of the most successful people on the planet have a similar trait. They can stay cool under pressure. So maybe all you need to be successful is to be cool with a Sony product like this the Sony the world's first pocketable air conditioner. It's called the Reon Pocket 3 and was released in 2020 for around 200 dollars. Its personal air conditioner is not specifically for your pocket. You switch it on and hang it around your neck when you are hot under the collar. And for when you're being grilled by the boss.

Now, if the idea needs to be weirder for you, what if I told you It even comes with a T-shirt explicitly designed with a pocket for the Reon. One might argue that adding a T-Shirt under a work shirt might be counterintuitive… but let's not stray from the point. This is the world's first and likely the world's smallest personal air conditioning unit.

It has an intake and exhaust system. And silicon contacts matt to rest on or close to the surface of your skin. It's this mat that delivers that cooling sensation.

Now, remember the story I told you at the beginning of the video about the Japanese Tony Stark in war-torn Tokyo. Specifically, how about how they used the rice cooker parts to make heating pads… well, how about this for a full circle. The Reon pocket doubles up as a heating pad… how about that. It's also controllable via an app. Call it strange, call it weird, or even genius…one thing is for sure the Reon Pocket is cool. And at the right time at the right place, I'm sure Sony could sell these like sweet bean paste hot cakes. 

Vaio UX 8/10

Alright, I could not resist adding at least one Sony Vaio product to this list. Because I have worked for Sony as a brand ambassador in the past. In fact, in the flagship department store I worked in, I managed to make Sony the number 1 selling PC brand in that store single-handedly…

ironically that was the same year Sony closed the Vaio business down…anyway. Let me explain why the Sony Vaio logo is one of the greatest logos ever. So the Vaio brand came around when things were transitioning from analogue to digital. 

Now look at this v, and a are a smooth line like an analogue wave & the I, and O looks like 1's and 0's analogue to digital. It's just brilliant. Like this, the Viao UX. Now there were various versions of this, but to explain this simply. The Vaio UX was a full windows handheld portable PC. It was released a year before the first iPhone. It had a better screen than the iPhone, a fingerprint scanner, a rear-facing & selfie camera, a mic, expandable memory, a USB port, a headphone jack! as well as a full qwerty keyboard, mouse stick, a stylus, it had intel inside… It supports wifi & Bluetooth & cellular 3G. It was kind of like a blackberry on steroids… like the liver king. 

But it gets better. It shipped with a docking station and introduced more IO. 3 more USB ports, a VGA out, ethernet, firewire, and passthrough power for charging.

This had a lot of potential…but maybe not enough finesse to compete with the iPhone. The gaming possibilities alone could have made this great, and in fact, some of there were people out there that modded this, adding SSDs and PlayStation controllers to it to make it a fully-fledged handheld PC gaming device… a sony steam deck… that name would have been fire! 

Xperia Pureness

Curiosity is the key to creativity. And have ever looked at your phone and wondered what's going on behind the scenes that you can't see? Well, the Sony Ericsson Xperia team have clearly thought about this…The idea of Pureness & created Sony Xperia Pureness. 

A transparent phone, that you can look straight through. It had a monochrome 1.8" QVJ 240 x 320-pixel display, 4:3 ratio and 222 PPI density display that apparently looked better under bright light than it did at night. It had 2GB of onboard storage, more music, and the Netfront browser built-in. It also had FM radio tuner functionality. It was stylish, innovative and incredibly unique, and a little bit weird…

I would love to tell you that this phone had it all… but actually, its the word emptiness that best summarises this phone. Because it represents the display, it's like it's not even there. It also represents the lack of smart features that were available on smartphones at the time 2009.

Emptiness also represents what my bank account would have looked like had I bought one at the time. Because the Xperia Pureness cost almost £1000. Clearly, this was designed with rich people in mind… and there was even a concierge service you could use if you bought one.

Now, I heard that the Xperia Pureness didn't sell that well. But know what you got to respect about the Sony Xperia's devices, in general, all the way up until today? They're not afraid to be different. Sony is fearless in making their products stand out. Some may say that some Sony devices are a bit too out there, too unusual, too niche, or weird… But do you know what's weird to me? It's people & companies who try so hard to be just everybody else. 

And on that bombshell. If you want to learn more about why Coffee reminds me of my trip to Amsterdam with Sony. Check out this thumbnail on the screen right now.