Any Mattel Instant Replay Fans Out There?

[Exhibitman]

When I was six or seven I got this neat disk player with picture disks of players that looked like little records. The sound quality was atrocious but the disks were way cool. Years later I rediscovered them and started collecting.

The Mattel IR player was a handheld playback device with a tinny sounding speaker that would play small records with snippets of sports moments on them. The player was sold in a boxed set with some disks. Other disks were issued in four-disk blister packs on a sport by sport basis, and in sport-specific eight-disk portfolios with booklets describing the content as well.

The first and by far most common issue were baseball, football and basketball disks, which are black disks with a paper applique sticker that has the artwork and information. The artwork is very '1970s' and appeals to any child of the era, like me.



A secondary issue exists as well, consisting of two-sided picture disks with the imagery in the plastic itself.



These are tougher to find. Hockey disks are found in this series.

Some of the 2 siders have a sports Challenge question logo with generic images on one side and answer-specific artwork on the other.



They are the toughest of the disks, in my experience; I guess they were not popular. I do not recall having any of them. Interestingly, the sports challenge format is the same logo as a later full sized illustrated 33 1/3 rpm record series by Scarab Productions. Both were associated with the syndicated game show/CBS tv show of the era since the logo is the same and Dick Enberg actually talked up the Mattel product on the show in 1973. I guess they were not content to let a crappy idea die so they made their own full-sized disks. Here is a full sized disk: