Welcome to Worlds of Wonders, Teddy Ruxpin, the world's first talking animatronic toy
who was the hit of the 1985 Christmas toy season.
We'd like to take you on a journey through the inner workings of Teddy and we call our
videotape, Teddy Ruxpin, Inside Out.
We're going to take you on a journey through the inner workings of Teddy Ruxpin, the world's
first talking animatronic toy, Teddy Ruxpin, Inside Out.
Hi, welcome to the world of Teddy Ruxpin and Grubby and all their animagic friends brought
to you by a toy company called Worlds of Wonder that existed from 1984 to 1991.
The company was very prolific and did some groundbreaking work in shrinking Disney's
animagic or animatronic technology into toy size.
These toys are now collector's items because the company was short lived and because of
the rareness of the technology and the ability to keep it working after 15 years now.
These are still valued on eBay and other online auction and collectible toy shows.
Basically we'd like to go through the repair of Teddy Ruxpin to begin with and talk about
the underlying animagic technology and what can be done to keep these toys running year
after year and through all their ups and downs.
The first thing I'd like to start with is Teddy himself talking a little bit about his
origins and also the founding of the company.
Ken Forsey was an Imagineer with Disney back in the 1960s and 70s.
He worked on Abraham Lincoln Talking Statue for the Disney theme park in California, Anaheim.
He also worked on the rides It's a Small World, Country Bear Jamboree and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Teddy was inspired by Country Bear Jamboree when Ken was babysitting one night and tried
to come up with an idea of a toy that would entertain children at bedtime as well as kind
of keep their interest.
So his attempt to do this, he looked at Disney's technology and found an inexpensive, less
expensive way to create it.
These toys, he later partnered with a man who had been a vice president of marketing
at an Atari video game company, created a company called Worlds of Wonder based on this
animagic technology.
In themselves, a lot of care and love was done in the design of these toys and manufacture
to ensure a quality look and feel to the toys.
Originally when they came out, they sold for about $60 each.
These two work together as you saw, there's a cable that interconnects them and the sound
can bounce between either two speakers so that the characters can talk back and forth
and the sound can be routed through both at the same time when they sing.
What is beautiful to me is not only the outer plush look and design and the action and the
synchronicity of the motors, but what's on the inside as well.
As you get into repairing your teddies and working more with the technology, you find
that there's some really detailed intricate mechanisms, motors, and control systems that
make Teddy do his state of the art magic.
The technology, once you take apart and see the intricacy of it, is something that is
not around today.
It was very expensive to do this back in the 1980s originally when Ken Forsay designed
his first prototype and shopped it around to US vendors.
It was going to cost $150 just to make the toy.
He was able to partner with Don Kingsborough and have it made overseas in Korea, Taiwan,
and Hong Kong and got the price down to about $50 per toy by using cheaper labor.
These were marketed at around $60 a piece plus there were lots of accessories that went
with the two.
Eventually the product line was grown from there to encompass not only these two characters,
but a Mother Goose and Hector, a Talking Mickey Mouse and Goofy Pear, and Snoopy, the first
time Snoopy ever talked, the production for Snoopy was done by B. Mendelson who worked
with Charles Schultz to create the animated cartoon series.
All the characters are based on this animatic magic technology that uses specially designed
servo motors, these here, to move up and down the mouth and the eyes on the characters.
Some of the characters have turning head functions as well as Snoopy has ears that move up and
down as well.
Basically the beauty of the design is its simplicity, it's also a spring loading mechanism
so that children could come up and wiggle the nose and move the mouth and the eyes and
ideally because it's a synchronized servo motor it would reset itself and continue talking
right after the play.
So it was designed with a lot of thought in mind.
You'll see some of the flaws in the design as we look through a repair procedure, but
before it's time and even today it's still a state of the art mechanism that you still
only see most of the times in theme parts, just to make these, there's so many parts
inside that it's very hard to duplicate these characters today.
So anyway let's get to it, we're going to work on a Teddy, Ruck's been here, this guy
here and this just came in, brought him in from my storage and we're going to take him
for a first test and see how he's working and then we'll dissect him and perform surgery
and give you a tour through his inner workings and into his head and we'll try and repair
anything along the way that we see needs preventive maintenance as well as the ones that need
maintenance right now.
So anyway let's start with the batteries.
The first place we start with Teddy is his battery box.
This is his power supply and this is basically what keeps Teddy powered and fully charged.
He runs off of four C cells and basically there's a little guide as to the polarity
of those C cells and how they're going to be inserted into the battery box.
Normally with Teddy basically it shows a negative side of the battery and a plus side here.
The negative side of the C cell is the flat side here, the plus side is the one with the
nub here and even says it sometimes on a lot of the batteries like this energizer one here.
The best batteries to use for all the Ani-Magic toys are alkaline batteries, they give better
life to the motors, they can handle more current than standard C cell batteries.
And just from experience we seem to prefer Energizer over Duracell.
We notice they seem to be a little bit longer sustaining for the motors, they don't seem
to run down quite as quick although Duracell batteries will give more current initially.
Energizer seemed to have a more steadier current flow so we prefer them for a little bit longer
life although they're pretty close, pretty competitive.
So we insert our batteries into here and we take our test tape, this is called the Airship
that we were just playing, it's the first tape in the series of tapes that came with
Teddy and Ruby.
Basically there were about 40 tapes all together and they were specially coded.
As you can see Teddy has a standard tape player as you would see in a regular audio tape player
on your cassette deck or that sort of thing.
It has something called a read-write head and that's this little silver magnetic read
head in the center of the tape player and that actually has two heads in one.
Basically your typical stereo cassette tape has two tracks on it, one for left stereo,
one for right stereo.
The beauty of the AniMagic technology that Ken Forsay came up with is that he was able
to use one of those tracks for the normal audio when he engineered the tapes he brought
in people that did the voices for the different characters and had them tell the story and
narrate it and then to lay down the second track he came in and brought in some puppeteers
using special devices called Waldos that basically would make motion as they listened to the
sound of the voiceover artist.
Basically the two signals would get merged together and instead of a left and right stereo
channel you'd have the audio on one track and synchronized motor control pulses on the
other.
This would be fed through your tape head and then there's a printed circuit board inside
it we'll see that decodes the signals and drives the servo motors inside Teddy's head.
Very sophisticated technology, toy technology up until that time had just basically been
unsynchronized.
A toy would, like a pole string toy, would say some words and the mouth of the toy would
just move up and down randomly until it stopped speaking.
But here with Teddy what was breakthrough technology was that everything was synchronized
so when he held a note when he was singing the mouth would raise up just a little extra
bit and so the beauty of these toys, the art, is in that engineering and that synchronization
and that audio animatronics.
So to get started here's Teddy's volume control and the switch.
This is what turns him on and also controls the volume of his speech.
So it's a rotary knob and there's a little indicator here sort of like a triangle that
starts at a low point and then the triangle widens as you turn to the right.
So basically to switch on you turn it clockwise and then put it up.
So right now I check to see if Teddy's tape motor is moving.
Right now it's not so that tells me I've got a problem with this tape player.
This is a pretty traditional problem with most of the Worlds of Wonder characters we
see 15 years later that have tape decks in them.
Basically for the most part what's happened, there's two things.
There's a little thing called a pulley belt that wraps around the main drive motor and
this belt basically gets stretched over time.
Even if Teddy hasn't been used, because this motor's belt is under tension, just like the
fan belt on a car, that sort of thing, it's going to be stretched and over time because
it's such a small belt it'll decay, the rubber will break down and that's one common problem
with them.
So we know that's right off the bat we've got a problem, we're going to have to change
out that belt so let's get to work.
Turn him off and pull out the batteries.
This is his battery cover.
Battery cover door has two metal pieces on it that basically maintain continuity between
the batteries as you put the cover on.
Pull out the tape from the tape deck and set that to the side.
Some of the tools of the trade you're going to need to do this repair and do surgery on
Teddy is a basic Phillips screwdriver, hopefully about a medium duty Phillips head and that's
so you can, it has to be narrow enough that you can reach inside.
There's two screws here, Phillips head screws that are inside Teddy right next to the volume
control here.
Other tools that you'll be needing are ideally a hot melt glue gun.
I use a heat shrink or a heat gun for shrink tubing applications if I'm doing wire repairs.
You'll need diagonal cutters for cutting wire, ideally a needle nose pliers for bending or
manipulating wire.
It's a little heavier duty pair of cutters.
This is solder for my soldering iron that I have over here and here's some shrink tubing,
some tiny screwdrivers if I need them.
This is some unsoddering tools, this is a little vacuum unsodder for pulling solder
off of printed circuit boards or unsoddering wires from connectors and this is another
way of unsoddering, it's called solder wick and it's just basically a braid of copper
that soaks up solder like sort of like a sponge and it wicks up sort of like a candle wick
solder and then you just clip off each end as you soak up the solder to pull it off of
something.
It also has some nice little specialty tools that also are used in the medical field, some
forceps to kind of grip on things and lock on to them and hold them while I'm playing
with certain things.
And then also like a dental probe to go in with, sometimes this is helpful in trying
to get into one of Teddy's motors or one of the other characters motors by being able
to reach in through the head and kind of start it up and work it that way without being able
to, if I can't get my fingers inside something, really handy.
Although all these tools aren't necessary, a lot of repairs can be done just with a screwdriver
and mechanical devices, they do come in handy for almost any unexpected thing that comes
along and there will be broken wires, different things that do need to be soldered so if you
have some soldering skills those are real handy.
Another thing that's very valuable in testing, testing batteries or continuity through wires
or components themselves is something called a multimeter.
This is a very old one, it's an old analog style, basically it comes with two test leads
on it and this is for checking wires and that sort of thing, you can get new ones from RadioShack
or other vendors that have digital readouts as well, they'll actually tell you the numbers
for the volts that you're measuring or the continuity scale as well.
I happen to prefer this as one I've had for a long time and it helps me spot things really
quickly.
Okay, we have undone the four screws on Teddy, there's two by the volume control that are
in sort of a recessed cavity here and there's two that are right under the battery door
cover.
These are a lot smaller and for my screws I usually try and keep them in one location,
I'll put them in a plastic bag or something like that, make sure I don't lose them.
Another thing I've done is I'll keep a little box full of spare screws, if I've taken apart
two Teddy's to make one I'll keep the extra screws and put them in a box and accumulate
one over time that I'll have extra pieces of parts in, so that's always handy.
Now to get to the tape player, basically we're just going to kind of pry up on the corners
and pull them out.
There's some tabs under the plastic that kind of hold the tape player on but I'll need to
just break those free.
So I just grab the corner right at the top, pull out the bottom and then we see on the
inside, there's my other screw here, is the insides of Teddy and this is the art, this
is of animatronics right here.
Basically we showed you the tape player there and the tape player, that read head we were
talking about, there's two sets of channels, those signals come in to this connector right
here, to this printed circuit board and as you can see there's two cables, one for each
set of signals.
One signal is the audio signal that it's reading off the tape, that goes through an amplifier
circuit and then back out to Teddy's speaker here to give him his voice, his sound.
Basically the other one, the other signal is a coded set of pulses that some of these
chips on the board are going to interpret and use to drive these three servo motor cables
that go back up into Teddy's head.
So basically the design of those two things are what makes Teddy work together and because
the tape is moving and the tracks are synchronized together, that's how he's able to get that
precision.
Also the ability to use servo motors gives him the ability to have a real fine motion
and also to make it a constant motion that will constantly reset itself back to a certain
point, even if the motor gets shifted or moved it will return to that point.
A basic difference between a servo motor and a regular motor is something called feedback.
A regular motor basically you put current and voltage across it and it just turns.
Basically with a servo motor it will, when you move it to a certain position, this little
motor here has also a gear box and a little shaft and when you rotate this motor to a
certain position it will turn a variable resistor that will send three signals back to my PC
board and it will tell it it's relative location versus where it's supposed to be from the
signals on the tape.
It will compare the two and try and make the match up many times a second.
So that gives Teddy his accuracy and ability to synchronize to the audio that's coming
through the player as well.
The other feature on Teddy in order to make him work with Grubby is that there is a little
thing called an interconnect cable and this is the connector here and the uniqueness
about Teddy and Grubby is that there are four conductors on their special cable.
You can recognize their special cable, it has three stripes on it.
Each of the metal parts in between the stripes is the same as a wire and as you can see they're
wired point to point basically but these cables are very hard to find because they have four
conductors on them rather than three.
Also the spacing on these is different than your normal what would be like an audio video
four conductor plug.
Let's see, so basically what happens is this connector plug gets plugged into this connector
here that comes off of this part of the board here and then is routed over to Grubby and
then the control signals besides controlling Teddy's three motors and his sound will also
bounce the sound back and forth between Teddy and Grubby to have them talk back and forth
and also control the three servo motors in Grubby as well.
So these decoding circuits are actually controlling six servo motors between Teddy and Grubby.
Time is, let's get started replacing the pulley belt and what we do as part of our repair
features, we were lucky enough to come across some Teddy Ruxpin tape decks and PC boards
and plastic housings that had never been used, these were factory fresh so that gave us the
advantage of having brand new tape layers that we could put into the ones we repair.
Otherwise you may have to rebuild your old one and look at the components and see how
if they're corroded or used or damaged.
Let's go to it and I'll show you some of the insides that you want to be careful of
if you're rebuilding it.
The first thing to do when you're pulling this bezel off is to make sure you number
the different connectors so you know where they go after when you're replacing the rebuilt
tape layer.
So I usually just, for my numbering system is to go left to right, I know these are the
three servo motor drivers for Teddy so I just number them left to right, one, two, and three.
You can also do similar conventions.
This way, just four, five, six, seven, and eight, and then basically I think that's,
oh yeah, we have more over here, and then nine, ten, eleven.
So I just walk in around the board numbering everyone in order.
Okay so I pull off all these connectors, and these are what are called Molex connectors.
They all have little things called spring clips in them but the wires are crimped on
to the spring clips and when you press it against these little square pegs, the spring
actually pushes against it.
One thing to be careful of is if a connector feels loose or like it just falls off, especially
these two pin connectors or one pin connector, then you may want to look inside and make
sure that spring inside isn't compressed.
If it is, you may not be making good contact with the pin.
That could be a potential problem.
Now that we've got the tape player and the PC board and the plastic housing disconnected,
the next step is to remove the printed circuit board, and there are one, two, three screws
to remove that.
There's one, and again I put all my screws kind of in the same location.
If you want to categorize it, you can even make smaller groupings where you just keep
all the PC board's screws in one location, your housing screws for Teddy in the other
location.
It makes it a little easier to go backwards when you're reinstalling.
Okay, and then I also need to pull the connectors off like I did last time from the board from
the tape player interconnects.
Okay, and that's my printed circuit board.
Okay, I still have on this particular three motor Teddy, with Teddy there were many versions
of him from the point he was first brought into the world until the company did go out
of business.
What they were doing was to try and simplify the design and cut costs and make them more
efficient.
The very first Teddy Ruxpens, this one here, started with the metal tape player.
Basically it was what they call a metal bezel tape player.
Some of the flaws in the design though of these early Teddy's were that they didn't
have an automatic battery shut off, so that basically they'd play and the tape would run
out, but the motor would keep driving and trying to keep running the tape, so there
was no sensor to tell the printed circuit board that the tape could reach its end.
So a lot of times if people forgot to turn off the power switch, the batteries would
be drained because the motor was still trying to run.
So basically over the years, things got refined, they went from a metal tape player, although
we prefer the metal, we think that has the best sound quality of all the ones.
The plastic one models and the circuitry associated with them were much better as far as saving
battery life and also much simpler design, didn't have as many moving parts.
So these are good quality and actually were called the top of the line Teddy's by the
employees at the company.
So my next step is to get to the tape player itself, and this particular one version also
has another PC board embedded in with the tape player.
So this is going to be a little more complicated, I'm going to have to unsolder this from the
tape player and then transplant it into my new one.
Now that we've removed the PC board, basically we have these loose cables here and we want
to remove the tape player that's tied to this plastic, what we call a plastic bezel by three
screws as well, and this particular screw over here also has a lock nut as well that's
embedded inside the tape, so when we remove this screw we want to kind of put our finger
over that lock nut so that it doesn't fall out and we lose it, because it is a very tiny
little piece.
So I put my screwdriver in there, recessed part, and pull that screw out, there's my
screw, and washers right here, and it's embedded nicely in the tape player so we'll get it.
And then I have two others, one right at the top of this plastic bezel here.
These are all kind of a, sort of like a wood screw, this one that had the washers like
a machine screw, this is sort of like a wood screw, it bites into the plastic, all these
do the same here, and they're kind of self-tapping, self-threading screws that basically dig into
the plastic as they make their connection.
Some problems that occur is that if something has been screwed and unscrewed a couple times,
like a wood screw, it may start to strip out the inside and not grip as well.
The thing I've always done is to try and keep enough of a collection of these that if I
do have that problem I just go with a longer screw that can dig in further down and give
me some extra, or you can try going with a wider screw that'll re-burrow into the wider
outer wall.
So there's a couple ways around that to do these repairs as well.
Now I'm going to try and remove the tape deck, and the key to it is I want to keep this door
part and fold it up, I want to be able to pull the tape deck through this area, I still
have this little piece with the Worlds of Wonder logo on it, so I want to try and get
it out from under there without breaking it off and keep my tape layer intact.
So what I do is I kind of push up on that, and push up on this at the same time, the
bezel will flex a little bit, and then I push up with my left hand on the bottom, and then
just kind of pull it out this way.
There's my thing, and there's my problem, here's the pulley belt.
It should have been draped around the inside of this motor, and it should have been draped
around the inside of that pulley, but it fell off somehow, so this is my problem.
I'm also testing it, and I'm seeing that, oh this is pretty flimsy, the rubber feels
very dry, and like it's going to break on the spongy, so it doesn't have the newness
or the strength that it should.
So what I'm going to, I can at this point, I'm also inspecting my contacts, we were talking
about the automatic battery shut off technology.
On these newer ones, this is the technology right here, these little two metal points
here, as the motor turns, they open and close, just like the old points on a car distributor.
But what they're doing is by opening and closing, they're giving a little pulse to my processor
board that's telling it that the motor is moving and it sees that pulse.
When this freezes, and there is no pulse coming out of here, the processor circuitry reads
it as the tape has come to an end, it automatically drops into, turns itself off by basically
disabling itself at that point.
The problem with that is if this belt gets loose to the point where, as this motor spins,
as the motor in here spins, the pulley belt isn't turning these gears and causing those
points to open and close, then the signals aren't going through here and the tape player,
the processor board reads the tape player as not working or the end of the tape.
As we saw, it didn't even get started, the tape player may start to turn.
There's two other features that also are due to corrosion.
As you can see, there's kind of a blackish material here, blackish material here, and
a little bit over here with these.
Here I would either try and clean those points by taking like an emery board or something
to them to make them shinier and make them have a better contact, or I would replace
the whole tape player altogether.
Since I have a good stock of brand new ones, that's normally what I do when we're running
our business.
This particular contact here is engaged when a tape is put into a teddy.
What it does is it closes these two points together to tell that a tape has been loaded.
When a tape is released, the door is lifted and then when the door is lifted, it pushes
down this lever, which lifts this thing up and there's a little spring that causes it
to catch, opening up these contacts.
These contacts down here, as you can see, there's like a two-way switch.
Normally these are closed until this little lever is pushed down, then it opens this contact
that closes this one here.
This little device here is used in the bottom of the tape player to disable Teddy's audio
animatronic function if a regular audio tape is put in.
If you look at Teddy's special tapes, there are these tabs as in a normal tape, but there's
also two little tabs in the center and they use those as kind of a guide.
When this goes into the tape player, if those tabs are there, the little spring we were
looking at, the little switch here, stays in its normally closed position and the little
tab there falls into the hole and doesn't move.
If you use animatronics to disable the motor motion as the audio tape is playing, so you'll
get the sound of Teddy, but the motors will not move, you'll just get audio sound.
So that way you can use Teddy as a walkman, a walk bear, I guess, and play audio tapes,
but his motors won't randomly move around depending on whatever signals are coming out
of the second track on that cassette tape.
So anyway, that's what that switch is for and the resulting electronics.
We finished up disassembling the tape player and we inspected the tape player assembly
and looked at areas where we can repair that and rebuild it.
The next step is to look at Teddy's, inside Teddy's head, we're going to perform some
head surgery here, and take a look at his three, in this case, three servo motors that
activate Teddy's eyes, nose, and mouth.
Fortunately, Worlds of Wonder, the designers of it, made it pretty easy for us.
They basically put a single seam up the back of Teddy that allows us to enter into that
area.
So basically, the location of that seam is right at the end of where the red cloth connects
to Teddy's fur.
You basically come with a seam ripper or a cutter or some kind of knife and just cut
the little knot or a couple of the seams and then hopefully, basically, the seam just opens
up for you.
Trim a little bit here and then from there, if it's not too tight, you can just basically
pull on it, the seam, loosen the seam and then just pull Teddy's head all the way up
to the end here and then pull the wire, the thread out.
This is just one length of thread that started at the top and there's a zig, kind of a zig-zag
pattern that goes back and forth, hides the seam and pulls Teddy's head together all the
way down to the bottom here where it's sewn together and then tucked into this ridge along
Teddy's shell and then when we press the bezel assembly in there, this will normally hold
the Teddy's cloth outfit and shape there.
So let's get into the head.
Basically we fold back the fur and this reveals Teddy's insides, including this plastic mask
that makes a strong plastic frame inside where the facial area is.
There's a foam covering for Teddy's servo motors that makes it soft and prevents his
motors from getting damaged and that we can either peel off.
That's glued to the top of this.
We can peel that off or leave it in place, but to remove the mask part, there's two tabs
that kind of clip on here and one on the bottom.
So we just kind of push back this way and then push at the bottom and then pull his
mask forward trying to leave the nose and mouth together to reveal the motor frame that
we showed you before.
There's Teddy and there's his mask and the way this was built is pretty ingenious.
The legs and everything are attached to the body, but the upper outfit with the torso
just slides right over the legs and comes up this way.
So here's Teddy's lower legs with the fur glued to his foam and then here's Teddy's
facial fur, his body and his arm fur in one unit also.
Here we have two examples of Teddy's head motor servo motor frame assemblies.
Teddy as he was revised and simplified over time, over three years from 1984 to 1987,
he went from a three motor sub-assembly where you can see three servo motors driving three
separate eyes, nose and mouth to a two motor sub-assembly where you have one motor driving
the lower mouth and that lower mouth is hinged to the upper mouth so as you drive the upper
one it moves right in mirror image and then another motor for the eyes.
The basic motor assembly as we mentioned before is spring loaded.
So as a child grabs one of these motors that motor attach facial features, the motor will
automatically reset the motion of Teddy and that's accomplished by the servo motor itself
and the spring that keeps pushing it in place and automatically seeking the position that's
generated by the synchronization signals on the tape.
I'm just going to pull a servo motor out just to show how it fits into this motor housing.
I removed the spring, there's two little nubs in the motor frame and then on the motor itself
this spring comes out from there and then to get the motor out of the frame I'm going
to use my Phillips, the point of it, there's a little dimple on where this slot is and
it doesn't just push it out.
All the motors are routed through Teddy's neck assembly and that's just kind of a rubber
stem, a square channel for putting the wires through and that's held down with these clips.
There's a clip here for holding the stem up to the motor frame.
There's another clip, you can see it right here, for holding Teddy's neck to the base
of his plastic body here.
So basically once I remove the clips then I can remove this channel for Teddy's wire
motors.
And then this one just has a little piece of tape on it, just clip that and open the
channel up and that gives me the freedom to release the motor.
Now these are the key, these servo motors are the key to Teddy's operation.
As we mentioned before the difference between a regular motor and a servo motor is the concept
of feedback.
As normal motor turns it just spins in one direction or the other, we can reverse it
forward or backwards.
With the servo motor you can get a lot more precise motion and so basically as Teddy moves
back and forth you can find an exact location for that motor and if for some reason it changes
that motion is fed back to my printed circuit board here and it tries to constantly readjust
itself to the proper position.
That gives Teddy real precise movement when he's speaking and since it's synchronized
with the audio with his voice gives it a realism that isn't seen in normal toys.
Teddy was a breakthrough product in 1985 when he came out, he was the big Christmas toy
of the season because of this precision and lifelike ability to really portray a motion
with just three motors like this or even two.
One thing to look for in servo motors is over time there is a little motor here, a gearbox
and the feedback pot, there's also some grease inside that gearbox that can harden up during
cold weather or become real liquid during hot weather and what happens when it hardens
up it may freeze up the gearbox.
A lot of the problems that result from a frozen gearbox or grease that is hard in the gearbox
is that the motor will just freeze and lock up, the motor will try and turn but the gearbox
is frozen so it can't move very well and so one of the solutions to that kind of problem
is to just give it a good twist, basically exercise that gearbox if the grease hasn't
been used for a while by moving it back and forth sometimes that's just enough to liquefy
that grease that was kind of in a hardened state and get those gears kind of meshing
together and moving and that's enough to get that motor started.
Basically as you can see with the eyes here as this motor moves back and forth the eyes
move with it, there's a little cam on each of these features, it's like a crescent moon
and it meshes thanks to the spring being pushed against it, this rounded rubber cam on the
motor shaft rubs against this nylon plastic cam and that's what creates your movement.
Sometimes if the motor locks up you can work Teddy's eyes without opening them up and basically
back drive that motor so what you're doing is making the thing work in reverse and if
you can get this cam to push against this cam and move your motor a little bit that
might be just enough to free up that gearbox and get it working without having to do surgery
and open Teddy's head.
We've tried that on several and it's been successful maybe 30 or 40% of the time and
the same with Teddy's other features.
Usually I try and run a cassette tape and while Teddy's talking and supposedly getting
the signals to energize his motors I can try working his external features, back drive
that motor and then sometimes I can get those eyes to move or the nose or the mouth but
if not then I have to do surgery and go in and either physically work that motor to get
it going again while he's talking or maybe replace the motor altogether so it's good
to have an extra supply of Teddy's to pull spare parts from if you need to.
These motors aren't made anymore in this type of assembly so about the only way you can
get spare parts is to take one Teddy, an extra Teddy that maybe is broken in some way and
use the extra motors there to make your other Teddy's work.
So that's one approach.
We do sell limited supply of parts through our company and can help you with obtaining
parts.
We can also provide the new what we call bezel assemblies or the sub-assemblies with the
plastic cover, the tape player and the printed circuit board if you would like to purchase
those as well.
Another thing to inspect when you're looking at the motor frame, look for any breakage.
A lot of times we've found these motor frames are cracked right at the joint part so if
these things are broken it's a good idea to just replace the whole frame.
You can try super gluing a cracked part but a lot of times that doesn't hold up very
well.
This plastic has aged over about 15 years now and it becomes soft and brittle over time
so a lot of times if there is a crack in the frame anywhere along it you probably want
to try and replace the whole frame if you can.
Another thing to look for if there is slippage in these features, look at your cam and if
there is dirt or build up on that, clean that off with alcohol and a lot of times that will
become sticky and it will leave a residue at the point where this rubber cam meets this
nylon cam and when that happens Teddy's mouth may not move as well or just stick a lot more.
So look in and clean that area.
Basically when your motor fails it will usually fail in two ways, usually the motor itself
will be fine but the gear box will either become very hard to turn, that means there
is very little grease left in there and the nylon gears are breaking or they're cracked
or the grease has become too liquefied or there is also a little tiny pulley valve in
here that might be stretched and you can tell when you turn this you get a feel that it
is slipping too much, the gear box itself is too loose.
The other thing to watch for is sometimes the gear grease can ooze through the holes
where the feedback potentiometer is at and actually coat the potentiometer and make it
difficult for it to tell its relative position, at that point then you need to replace the
whole motor because this feedback potentiometer is bad.
Also this potentiometer can wear down in time by rubbing back and forth over time, it can
become defective as well.
So those are about four or five different failure modes.
The way what usually happens with Teddy is either his eyes or mouth or nose won't work
at all or you'll get a chattering motion they call servoing, that's where the potentiometer
is seeking to match up the point that the tape is telling it to what it actually sees
from the motor and it's not quite seeing it because the potentiometer is damaged it'll
kind of range back and forth so you'll see Teddy's mouth just kind of jittery up and
down and usually that means you need to replace the whole motor.
So anyway we'll go ahead and start putting Teddy back together.
Just in general, other general points to look at, one other frequent failure is the volume
control switch that we were talking about earlier, it's the switch that turns on Teddy
and also increases and decreases the volume.
This switch is also, it's a rotary switch that has five positions but it's also what
they call a potentiometer, there's a little wiper contact that basically goes across each
of these points and as you can see this particular one has some corrosion on it too.
Normally the switch part, this little crescent moon at the top of the switch gets pushed
up by this little fiberglass piece and that should lift this contact and separate it and
then when you go the other way and release that piece it should contact this point here.
A lot of times if this gets corroded it'll never complete that contact so you either
have to again file that contact to make them nice and clean or replace these parts altogether.
We do have extras of these or sometimes you can find these in electronic parts stores
as well.
The problem that results from this switch and internal wearing or corrosion on the contacts
inside is a staticky noise that comes from Teddy's audio signal.
If you press on the volume control and it sounds staticky or just in general there's
a low level static noise there, it's due to some corrosion on the internal parts of
these contacts.
At that point you need to replace this as well.
Again another source if you can't find it in electronic surplus stores is to pull one
off a second Teddy and inspect the contacts and try replacing it, re-soldering this onto
the existing Teddy.
In addition to speaking about the audio section, this is your speaker and your speaker cabinet.
You might want to check if you're having audio problems with the speaker itself and look
at the wiring to that speaker.
Usually there's a two wire cable, usually it's an orange one, with two pins on it that
are soldered to the connection into the speaker.
There's also a technique you can use with an ohmmeter to actually measure across the
impedance of the speaker, this should be an 8 ohm speaker, you can actually measure across
it using your ohmmeter and when you apply the ohmmeter across the two points you should
get a crackly sound from your speaker to tell if the speaker is working.
So if you have audio problems that's a good place to check.
Another place to check, another source of potential problems with the battery cavity
here is compression on these springs, battery springs.
For some reason your batteries are good and you plug them in and it doesn't seem like
you're getting any power to the tape deck or anything.
Check the compression on these springs inside, a lot of times a couple of versions of Teddy
used a flimsier spring and it would get pushed in to the point where it was almost flat.
If you have to bend them back out and test for the compression of that spring, if it
seems like it's going to cave in pretty easily then you might want to see if you can replace
that spring from another Teddy or we have extras of these as well.
So now we're at the point where we kind of want to reassemble our Teddy.
If we had problems with the motors we would replace them, I'm going to reinsert as an
example reinsert this one into the frame.
As you can see I've got my notch in my frame and my motor that has this kind of ridge on
it.
There's a couple different kinds of motors, there's what we call the left handed and the
right handed.
On one version of the motor the notch is to the left and your motor is on this side as
you look straight down on it.
On my other motor, the one in this frame here, my motor is on the left hand side and the
notch part as you can see here is on my right.
So you want to differentiate between those two motors when you're replacing one to make
sure you've got the right kind and it goes right in the right, back in the right area.
I think for the three motor Teddys there's two of one kind and one of the other.
For the two motor Teddys there's one of each.
So basically to place this back into the motor frame I try and line this up, I know my cam
is here for my mouth feature, I know my roller is here.
So I want to line this up so that it goes back in here and then when I reseat it also
I want the nub from this motor to line up with the nub on my motor frame so I can put
my spring back in.
So I basically line this up with my notch and there's a little kind of a catch notch
in the center here that aligns with a kind of a raised piece in the center of my ridge
here.
So I've got to kind of push it so it'll hop that ridge and lock itself in place.
Kind of push it in there and I can use my screwdriver again.
I like to use my Phillips with the little dimple in the ridge here and use that to push
it in.
Make sure I get the cam out of the way.
That sits really nice.
It should just snap into place and be solid and then I should also because of the feature
with the spring it should kind of rock up and down a little bit.
You can see how that engages the cam here.
See how that rubber wheel on the end of my motor shaft kind of rocks and rolls in there.
And then I want to put my spring back in.
Make sure I can find my spring.
I've got this lined up here.
My two nubs are facing each other.
This is where my forceps comes in real handy or you could use a needle nose plier.
Basically I want to kind of grip the spring about maybe three quarter of the way up.
Just grab onto like one layer of the spring.
And I want to compress it against one side but hold it long enough so that I can get
it over this nub as well.
That helps it fall back in place.
A lot of times I try to put these on with just my finger and my hand and I get the thing
compressed and before I could get it over that nub it would pop off and fly halfway
across the room.
So basically the forceps help me position it, hold it while I was trying to get it over
that top nub while I was compressing it.
And the benefit of that is that it just lets you hang onto it easier.
I try to do this with just my fingers and a lot of times just as I was getting it over
the nub the thing would pop off and fly halfway across the room and I'd lose the spring and
I'd have to try to put another one.
So these forceps or needle nose pliers make the job a lot easier in that effort.
Okay so basically the next step is to place the neck stem on Teddy.
And so I've got this channel here, it's a rubber channel, I tuck my wires in and put
this over, fold the wires inside there, try not to pinch any wires and then fold this
channel up.
As you can see there's kind of two sides to this channel, there's one that has like two
cross pieces here and one that just has one cross piece.
I usually try to put the two cross pieces up toward the top of the head and the single
cross piece down at the base of the neck.
And then to seat it I want to kind of also secure this extra flap.
I'm going to tape it just to hold it but sometimes it's a lot easier if I just press that part
in against where I've got three sides surrounding it.
And then to hold it in place these plastic clips go back in on either side, they press
in and then they latch on the other side.
There's two little kind of hook ends that grab around the plastic to lock it in, that's
not going anywhere.
Then this part inserts back into my, through my neck, I route, there's a rectangular cut
out there, I slide that in and then put another clip to latch this to my body here.
And then this comes through the body and then connects to my PC board from there.
That's my head sub assembly.
Another part of Teddy's motor frame and facial features to be concerned about is looking
at the facial parts themselves, the eyes, nose and lower mouth.
Basically those usually are the most prone to breakage from kids or whoever plays with
Teddy.
As we were saying they're built to take a certain amount of use where you can kind of,
they expect the kids to kind of grab them and work them back and forth while Teddy was
talking.
But a lot of times in play kids are a little more aggressive than that and things get damaged
beyond repair.
And especially at the point where after ten, fifteen years now the plastic is starting
to wear, it's getting soft or brittle and breaking more easily so you see a lot more
Teddy's that have broken mouths or broken eyes.
We can replace those to an extent.
Sometimes at the factory they glued these things in place but like the motors they're
mounted on inside grooves on the motor frame and if the glue isn't very strong you can
slide those things in and out.
So here's basically what those individual parts look like and the resultant tab that
would slide into the motor frame assembly.
That's the nose, here's your lower mouth and there's the tab there.
You can see the cams built into each feature so the motor can work against it.
The eyes are kind of unique.
They have a cam but they also come in two pieces.
So they come apart like this.
If it's broken it's hard to replace that.
You can try re-gluing them but ideally your cam, this is actually a three piece system,
your cam slides into this part of the eye, so that would be your left eye and then as
you can see there's two grooves.
One is the cam shaft, the other is a long groove, the hole goes through the cam.
So basically you insert those two in there and this also goes through two holes in Teddy's
area here but you insert it in the motor frame through two holes in the motor frame and then
this just joins together like that and then you have to make sure those two rods pass
all the way through the holes on the other side and that gives you Teddy's motor eye
movement as well when the motor works against the cam that makes his eyes move up and down.
Let's start putting Teddy back together.
This is the rebuilt tape player as we saw when we pulled out the original.
The belt had fallen off, the pulse points were corroded, my tape insertion contact points
were corroded and then I think there was some corrosion on here as well.
We replaced this with a brand new tape player that had never been used before.
It also has a brand new reed head that has never been used and a new roller that has
not been damaged or hardened.
So when we do our repairs we have access to these special factory fresh tape players that
were never opened or used and then in addition we will replace this pulley belt that was
on the module that we pulled from out of its bubble wrap and we actually replaced this
with a new fresh one because we found that even though it has been sealed and never used
this belt has been under tension.
So the original one that is on this factory fresh tape player still may be bad and so
we go ahead and replace it with a new one anyway and then in addition because of I transplanted
the PC board that was on the original and I basically had to unsolder this from my original
board and solder it back into these connecting points on this board.
So I had to do that and make it work but what I got is a nice cleaner module that should
give me another 2 to 5 years worth of work without any more problems with corrosion.
Basically if you don't have access to a brand new tape player then cleaning those contacts
will probably get you through and then see if you can find a replacement belt for these.
We use a PRB line of pulley belts and there are certain ones that you can match up that
are close to this and there may be some electronic supply stores in your area that carry that.
There's other pulley belt line manufacturers as well or if you want to contact us we can
get ones for you directly that are exactly the right size.
Let's start putting it back together, we'll go just the opposite of how we started when
we took Teddy apart.
Insert my tape player in so that my tape cable, the reed head cable goes in first and then
these other three cables come in behind.
In order to do that I'll need to pull my plastic cover out and to the back but I still want
to keep it at an angle so I want it to kind of be back this way so I can get that in.
I lead with my tape cable and then I want to kind of slide the thing so it goes between
these two points here so I'm going to push up on that with my fingers and try and fold
the motor in and I also want to get these connectors to go in through this hole here.
It's a little tricky at first take some practice but the more you do it the easier it gets.
So basically I make sure my three connectors clear the bottom without getting jammed inside
on this side and then I've got my one connector up here that comes off the tape head that's
up at the top here and then I want to kind of line up the, there's three holes in here
to make sure those line up and that everything's seated well so I don't have anything that's
just in there cantilever.
I can double check where the mounts, the screw mounts go to make sure they line up well with
the holes.
And then to seat it I'll go ahead and do the opposite of what I did earlier.
I have my three screws plus the nut for the tape player.
There's a recessed little area in the tape player where the nut goes I'm going to put
that in first and hold it down with this finger while I flip it over and then I find the screw
that's a machine screw not a self-tapping screw and that's what goes in on this side.
Make sure I seat that, tighten that down and I make sure that the threads from my threaded
screw don't go beyond the edge of that or if they do very little so that when my tape
goes in it's not being punctured by the end of that screw there.
So then I try and find my next one, take my two threaded screws, one goes in the top and
one goes in the bottom, bottom right hand corner.
Okay we've mounted the cassette player inside the plastic housing or what we call plastic
bezel.
Now the trick is to mount the PC board on the plastic bezel and insert our connectors.
This is the printed circuit board that was in Teddy.
Over the years Teddy evolved there were several versions of this printed circuit board.
This was one, if you look on the board itself they'll be, and you hold it this way, there's
a little thing that says REV, that's short for revision number.
Early ones had just a REV with a dash after it, those were the very early versions.
This particular one that I try and use now is the revision E board or Rev E, it's the
latest version that was put out of those three motor Teddy Ruxpin boards you can tell.
It has three connectors on the side but it also has the latest features for basically
sensing when the battery is, you know being able to turn itself off automatically when
it senses the tape is at the end and all that.
So if I'm swapping boards or I have several Teddy's I want to make sure that the revision
number on that board matches the one I'm replacing it with.
Basically as you can see this is a version of a two motor Teddy printed circuit board
and instead of the three connectors on the side this board's been simplified where there's
only two connectors that are used to drive the two servo motors in Teddy's head.
So you can see there's fewer connectors around the peripheral, there's just a, they've eliminated
about two or three connectors that are on the original board too to simplify this particular
Teddy Ruxpin.
That was the last of the large size Teddy's, the two motor version that came out about
1987 or so.
So to seat this board we take our three screws that we removed originally and re-seat them
in the bezel.
Here's the three screws back in position there and I'll go ahead and re-seat my connectors.
This one coming off the tape head goes to here in this area.
This connector, this is, wraps around kind of in this channel here, goes over to the
end here.
I have another one here, that's my power, goes to here, or actually that's my pulse
counter to make sure the tape's moving and this particular one goes over here.
So if I've numbered these correctly they should fall back into place otherwise if you
do enough of these you start to figure out what connectors go to what mating pin there.
Now I want to reattach Teddy back together and remount this back into the speaker cabinet
as well as put Teddy's costume back on.
So let's start with the costume.
Tuck his legs through the bottom two holes and then he's already got his arms attached
so the key now is just getting the head on.
I try and crimp his mouth and his nose together so they'll slide through the mask.
This is the mask here and as we said before there's two, three clips that are going to
clip around positions on his motor frame so I want to slide the nose through and then
try and make it so that these clips line up and snap into place.
Then I fold the skin over the foam rubber and try and bring his cloth body, his clothes
over the foam as well.
This gets Teddy ready for sewing.
And at this point we can either try and sew his head back on or I like to like just test
Teddy first to make sure everything's working before we sew him back together so I don't
have to redo it.
So I'm going to go ahead and reinsert the tape player bezel assembly here first.
And again if I've numbered everything correctly I should know where these are going.
This is the switch, volume control, goes to the top here and my speaker goes right next
to it, this connector.
On the bottom of the board I've got my, this is actually my power, this two pin connector
here and then next to it is the output port that goes to grubby or to the answer box or
the movie show projector.
And then all that's left are my three eyes, nose, and mouth connectors for the servo motors.
So if I've got those numbered right I definitely want to make sure I match up the numbers because
otherwise Teddy's eyes will move when his mouth is supposed to and we don't want that
to happen.
Let's see there's, I've got the number three here on the bottom, you can kind of tell too
by the lights, usually the short one because it's coming from the top part of the motor
chassis will be the top most one.
Let's put those all together and then ideally when I reseat everything, the wires and all
this back in the cabinet I want to make sure I'm not pinching any wires.
So as we saw there's like an area here especially is kind of critical where the door hinge assembly
rests.
As this opens and closes this, these two half moon brackets push that thing up and that's
critical so that when the tape deck opens the little sensor in there is activated as
well.
So I want to make sure when I press it in that basically everything clicks into place,
there's no pinched wires, anything like that and that basically Teddy's switch is free
to move but I didn't pinch any wires or push that in the wrong way.
And then to test it I can, you know, at this point screw things in and button it down so
I can test it or I just make sure I press real hard and put my batteries in.
And then again I follow the procedure that shows me on the battery card.
I've got my four C cells, it shows me the plus side which is the negative side up so
and then on this particular battery box I alternate them, negative plus plus the negative.
And then I make sure my battery cover is clean, I've got two strips on that that tie all those
batteries together.
One thing that often happens is these get corroded as well or batteries leak and you
get like a greenish battery acid and that will keep this from making good contact.
I want to make sure those are clean.
And then I'll go ahead and put in my test tape, turn them on and see if it works.
Oh, hello there, my name is Newton Gimmick, but everyone just calls me Gimmick, I'm an
inventor.
Oh yes indeed, we discovered that Gimmick is a marvelous inventor.
Oh, I think marvelous inventor might be exaggerating, it would probably be sufficient to say a
wonderful inventor.
We also discovered that Gimmick is modest.
We told Gimmick that we were on a journey to find a treasure.
Looks like he's working, now if I'm pretty much convinced he's working I'll go ahead
and sew up the head and then button them down for good.
My wife Marianne is doing the sewing on Teddy's head.
She says to use a ball needle, upholstery thread to make sure the thread is long enough
to do the sewing with one length.
She has doubled the thread over here and as you can see she started underneath at right
at the top of the head and is doing kind of a back and forth stitch to try and pull the
two halves of Teddy's head together into an even seam.
She's going back and forth and carefully lining up the seams, pulling tight every three to
four stitches to make sure the fur is closed with no thread showing.
As you can see Marianne finished up the seam by pulling it together every three or four
stitches.
She sewed it together really smoothly all the way to the end here and then what we've
done is tucked the fabric from Teddy's cloth body all the way inside this reservoir all
around the edges of here and now I'm going to reinsert the tape player bezel that I've
reassembled, reconnected and again making sure all the wires are tucked away, they're
not getting pinched under the door hinges here or backed by the battery compartment
and then these tabs snap into place.
And then again I have four screws remaining, I've got two large ones that go inside the
recessed channels here for the top of Teddy and then two small ones that go down by the
battery box, drop those into the reservoir, my Phillips screwdriver, medium size so I
can get down inside the channels there, just tighten down, these are the tapping, self
tapping screws so if you have a problem, if they don't go in all the way or they feel
like they're stripped out you may need to use a longer screw or a slightly wider tapping
screw in order to dig into the plastic, you want to make sure when you're doing the battery
box that it connects flush with the connector point here so there's no gap where the batteries
should be springing up, make sure to press down real well, sometimes if I don't tuck
the fabric right it can keep the plastic housing from going all the way in, make sure it's
good there, pull back a little bit, kind of pull the fabric out just slightly while you're
tucking it in, okay that's a pretty good, I'm going to install these, there we go, that's
it, nice and tight.
Okay, so we're ready to go, reinsert our batteries according to the battery card, and then close
the cover, start them up, make sure the volume control moves straight up, and the TV's ready
to go.
A lot of times when we get a Grubby or Teddy or Grubby and all his friends, we get to a
spot where they've been spoiled or a child has fed them too much chocolate or something
like that where they need to be cleaned, we've gotten a lot of questions and when we started
we were also interested in finding a good cleaner that would be strong and reliable
for cleaning Teddy's fur, but also safe for children so that it wouldn't have any chemicals
or any other byproducts that could cause them to be ill or that sort of thing.
We found this brand called Folex, it's pretty much available in a lot of hardware stores
and grocery stores, F-O-L-E-X, it's made by a Folex company in Spring Valley, California,
and the nice thing about it is it does seem to work pretty effectively, it's called an
instant carpet spot remover, it's for cleaning carpets and spots on carpets, it says it
removes pet accidents, grease, ink, red wine, coffee, blood, rust, food, cosmetics, dirt,
most old stains, excellent for upholstery.
It seems to work pretty well for us over the years and again the good part about it is
it's safe, basically it has no real toxic materials in it so we've been able to use
it very generously by either spraying it directly on the fur and wiping it with a white cloth
or for basically for just spot cleaning where we can just spray a spot of the Folex on and
just work on a certain part of Teddy.
So both those techniques work really well.
There are other carpet cleaning products out there that other people have used that are
more comfortable with, whatever works for you is good but that's one that has helped
with us over the years so we thought we'd recommend that.
That's the end of our repair tape on Teddy Rutspin, we hope that you brought away some
information that you can use to solve problems that you encounter when trying to get Teddy's
working normally or over time if the nose or eyes or mouth or whatever jams up there
are certain techniques you can use to try and get them fixed and that you feel comfortable
going inside Teddy and looking around and see if you can find some problems and then
being able to sew it back together and get it back into one piece.
If you have any questions please call us or email us, our email is a4animated at aol.com
and we're available online if you had any questions on our videotape and would like
to correspond with more information.
We also would like to thank you for your attention and hope that we can be of service to you
in the future in making Worlds of Wonder products more alive to you, bringing in a magic technology,
keeping it going for years to come.
Just to give you a preview of what we hope to be our future tapes in this series, we
have a gallery of all the Worlds of Wonder products that used anamagic technology and
also a couple incarnations of Teddy that were created by Hasbro and Yes Entertainment, two
licensees that later gave life to Teddy down the road.
This is Worlds of Wonder's related products that came out after Teddy Ruxman was a successful
hit in 1984 to 1985 Christmas season.
The company itself lasted about three years before undergoing bankruptcy but in that period
they created a whole line of really imaginary and very complicated but beautiful products.
When the company came out of bankruptcy briefly in 1989, created a smaller version of Teddy
Ruxman.
Teddy Ruxman before going bankrupt in 1991, Hasbro picked up the license for Teddy and
produced a version that was similar to the original by Worlds of Wonder in the smaller
version that lasted about five years and then another company called Yes Entertainment produced
a version of Teddy in the late 1990s before they went out of business also.
Basically these are really quality toys and with good technology that's still ahead of
its time.
In addition to Grubby, Teddy also had other peripherals like this movie projector that
could actually show his adventures on a wall and then the answer box that was an interactive
question teaching aid for children to teach numbers and colors and sizes.
The answer box buttons would light up when Teddy would ask a question and after a child
would pick one of the answers from this overlay book it would respond with affirmation as
to the correct answer or correct the child if he was wrong.
So anyway some of the other toys in the Worlds of Wonder product line were Mother Goose and
her friend Hector and like Teddy and Grubby they were a pair and then Mickey Mouse and
Goofy basically were paired together.
Snoopy from Peanuts characters was created and this was the only incarnation of Snoopy
that approved by Charles Schultz that ever talked.
Snoopy was to be paired with the Charlie Brown at the time but then Worlds of Wonder company
was having financial problems and chose not to create a Charlie Brown partner to Snoopy
at the time.
In addition the ultimate version of the Animagic technology was Julie the talking doll.
She also had voice recognition capabilities created by Texas Instruments and could recognize
up to about six key words spoken by a child.
Those words in turn would trigger her to use her Animagic technology to speak on a certain
subject related to that key word.
She also had a light sensor, sound sensor, motion sensor and could read a book by touching
these resistive contact spots with her two contacts on her hand.
So the company was very prolific it was a combination of Ken Forsay's imaginary group
from Alchemy II and a lot of good engineering from the Northern California from Stanford
University related people and former Atari game manufacturing people that really brought
this magic technology to life and even though the company was short lived the technology
still has a lot of value and a lot of promise for the future.
We hope to keep it going for many years to come.
We hope you guys enjoy your efforts and get a chance to enjoy what was created here and
the magic of that technology.
Have fun and thank you again for listening to our day.
Bye bye.