Spell It: Awesome

Three reasons why the Speak & Spell rocked:

1) It talked.

2) You could play Hangman on it.

3) E.T. used one to phone home.

Texas Instruments made some sweet consumer electronics back in the 80's like the "Speak &..." family of toys. Speak & Spell would command you to spell out 10 different words before you were either congratulated on a perfect score or sternly instructed to try again for a perfect score. I would sit for hours and hours playing with my Speak & Spell trying to master all the words on the A level game. If the word "valiant" or "honor" came around I knew I could kiss my perfect score goodbye.

You know what else was awesome that Texas Instruments used to make...their early version of a personal computer. The "TI" was basically an Atari 2600 with a keyboard. It had a little runway to slide the cartridges into the slot and it had games like Munchman (not to be confused with Pac-Man) and TI Invaders which no one would confuse with Space Invaders. In Space Invaders you shot at little menacing aliens from outer space, in TI Invaders you shot at little Texas Instruments Corporate Logos. Ahh...good times!