How does 1991 Talkin' Leonardo work?
 

Hi guys!

How do you make Talkin' Leo from 1991 talk? I moved arms, legs, head... nothing.

I opened the speaker, but couldn't find a battery to replace?!

It requires these plastic strips that you slide through the speaker. Without them, you'll never hear him speak, I'm afraid. :(

Ah alright! I didn't notice these small holes! Thank you!

At least there's no battery that might leak.

Yeah, the plastic strips have small ridges on them that cause the "speaker" to vibrate. That's all there is too them. They are remarkably low tech but fairly creative in their simplicity.

I guess Playmates has come a long way with their voice fx technology. Nowadays, you don't need a plastic strip, you can just raise and lower their arms!

Heck, all you need is to even TAP the new FX turtles slightly and they go off. O_o

If they could have improved the sound quality, I'd rather see the pull strip versions. They are cheaper, don't require batteries that can damage the toy and new phrases are easy to add. Electronic, talking figures are almost always limited to just a handful of phrases.

I had a talking Raph, and I never could understand what he was saying... :D

@Mona Lisa: I love your avatar :)

@Soapy: The red plastic stripes were also released individually. I saw them on ebay a week ago, and when I saw this post I tried looking to see if they were available for you. Unfortunately they weren't but if you keep checking ebay I'm sure they will pop up again. They actually didn't cost a lot of money (it had to be around $11 - $19 keep in mind that they are still in the package). I grabbed a photo so you can see what they look like in the packaging in case you go on a hunt for them. I'm not sure how many of the stripes you have and just in case they break if you use them on your figures, but you can have at least an extra set.

Thank you Kevin!

Before I go hunting, I will have a look in my MOTU box, maybe the stripe is hiding there! :)

If you do fins the strip, give it several tries with different speed of pulling the stripe.

Depending on voice track some need to be pulled slower then others to hear what he says.