Did You Love “My First Sony”?

You liked bikes, ponies, pizza pie, macaroni, and possibly Billy and Tony (or Billie and Toni?)…but did you like Sony’s line of child-friendly electronics in the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s?

That was the declaration of the young voices singing the jingle – they liked certain things, but they LOVED “My First Sony.”

The condition to loving the product was that they had to “like” something that rhymed with it.

What Is “My First Sony”?

“My First Sony” was a line of child-friendly electronics introduced in 1987 that were the gateway product to only buying Sony electronics in later life.  Brightly-colored and built for little hands, the original products included a boom box, Walkie-Talkie headsets, Walkman, electronic sketchpad, amplified microphone with tape deck, a recording tape deck, and even an alarm clock.

Sony’s Dream Machine (which I got for my eleventh birthday) now feels like the big kid’s version of this cute alarm clock!

There was also this cool little toy.

It’s a sound pad.

The products were produced by Sony through the early 1990s, and the advertising always featured kids singing the jingle while overemphasizing their undying love for “My First Sony” above all else.  Bikes, ponies, pizza pies, macaroni, and boys be darned – “My First Sony” was the Dark Underlord by which these kids threw their love and allegiance.

“My First Sony” may have been the gateway product to future Sony consumerism, but these Walkie-Talkie headsets were likely a gateway to geekism.

The “My First Sony” Lineup

As I said, the product line included boom box, Walkie-Talkie headsets, Walkman, electronic sketchpad, amplified microphone with tape deck, a recording tape deck, and an alarm clock.  There was also a tape recorder with drum sound buttons, and a Discman was introduced to the lineup (I had the “big kid” version of the Sony Discman in 1996, and got a new one for Christmas in the early 2000s, when my original one broke).

The line made very few changes over the course of its life – a color modification here, the addition of CD players there – but overall, it kept its child-friendly look and feel.  In addition to the products originated in 1987.There were some modifications with the colors and designs (only slight), but the basic concept stayed the same throughout the entirety of “My First Sony” lineup’s life.

The products were available until around the mid-1990s – I remember seeing them in Caldor as late as 1994 or 1995 (memory doesn’t serve).  There are plenty of kid-friendly electronics out there, but “My First Sony” was my generation’s introduction to the world of owning cool electronics.

The “My First Sony” lineup was cute and certainly marketed to my age group when they were introduced, but I got something even cooler when I was seven years old…

“My First Sony” had nothing on My First Sharp…and this wasn’t my last!

That wasn’t the actual marketing name, but it was my first Sharp product.  It stuck with me until the mid 1990s, when I got my first big kid cassette boombox, which had audio connections for the Sony Discman.

The boombox, you can say, was my first Sony.

Yeah, yeah, I got my terrible jokes.

Kids Declare Their Love of “My First Sony”…in Commercials!

I would be the absolute worst if I didn’t include the commercials that accompanied the “My First Sony” lineup.  I featured the first commercial in a Flashback Friday article on Allison’s Written Words in 2018, but there were several others into the early 1990s.

Here’s the one I have in my collection…

Upload via Allison Venezio-Preston / Allison’s Written Words

This was the 1988 version, which introduces some new products to the already-impressive lineup of products.

Upload via Daves Betamax

And this was the 1991 version, which is the 1987 version with some slight modifications.  It was featured on the home video release of 1991’s My Girl.

Upload via ReeYees Retro TV

This Japanese commercial featured the “My First Sony” sketchpad.

Upload via kumori31

There’s some great showing and demonstration videos on YouTube of people with “My First Sony” products, but I especially enjoyed this one of the sketchpad, since it was the one I remember the least of the lineup.

Upload via Sonyphile

Did you own a “My First Sony” product, or do you merely remember seeing them in stores?  What was your first electronic device?  Mine was the aforementioned pink boombox.  Tell me your stories, and if you had a “My First Sony,” I’d love to know about the products, the quality of them, and your happy memories of them.

And if you just knew that jingle and sang it alot, then I’d love to know about that too, because it’s stuck in my head.