You might just remember the Speak & Spell from your childhood. Failing that, I believe it made up part of E.T.'s contraption for phoning home. Buzz Lightyear used a Speak & Spell to decipher Al's license plate after Woody was kidnapped. From a technical point of view, the Speak & Spell, for its time, was one hot piece of tech.

An aficionado in the UK has put together a Speak & Spell emulator, just in case you want to give your kids a taste of what Leapfrog-type toys looked like in our day. It doesn't have all the features implemented, the vocabulary is limited, and it's not 100% bug-free, but it is pretty fun. Check it out and show your kids just how good they really have it.