console: Animator

In the early 1980s, The Ohio Art Company released Etch A Sketch Animator, which provided kids with an opportunity to create electronic flip-board-style cartoons. The toy included a low-resolution pixel dot matrix screen, a speaker, eight function buttons, and several kilobytes of memory. Through a combination of button pushing and knob turning, kids could create, erase, and move a series of 12 images, and then animate the frames in a flip-book storyboard. The memory could store a sequence of up to 96 frames. Some of the sample animations included The Walking Robot, The Nosy Spider, The Spaceship Invader, The Birthday Cake, The Creeping Caterpillar, The Submarine, Baseball, and Halloween. The instructions for The Breakdancing Skeleton noted "All these frames can be jumbled together any way you want to make a crazy dance. The moonwalking step is a cycle and should be copied exactly to get that effect...." While the Animator was on many Christmas wishlists in 1986, its popularity quickly faded. Many kids complained that it took long to complete an animation.