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Soundwave import-only MP3 player

Tomy releases MP3 player version of classic Transformer Soundwave character.

Donald Bell Senior Editor / How To
Donald Bell has spent more than five years as a CNET senior editor, reviewing everything from MP3 players to the first three generations of the Apple iPad. He currently devotes his time to producing How To content for CNET, as well as weekly episodes of CNET's Top 5 video series.
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Donald Bell
Photo of Tomy Soundwave MP3 players and headphones.
Soundwave's SD card is gonna mess you up! Autoblog.com

You may have heard that Transformers director Michael Bay, in his infinite wisdom, decided to exclude the beloved Soundwave character from his film (the poor guy took the news pretty hard). I guess the kids today don't care about portable cassette players, even ones that turn into gigantic robots capable of blowing your head off with a sonic concussion cannon. As a side effect, the film's merchandising machine is not cranking out any affordable Soundwave toys for us to clutter our cubicles. I even resorted to buying this cheap piece of crap. Japan, as usual, has the solution.

Tomy is releasing a Soundwave MP3 player in Japan that stays true to the character's first-generation design. To upgrade Soundwave to the MP3 age, his pop-out cassette deck is now an SD Flash memory card slot, and his cassette companions Frenzy and Rumble (sorry Laserbeak, Ravage, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat) are now headphones. The Soundwave MP3 player retails for around $100. With any luck, there'll be a slew of these on eBay. An Optimus Prime iPod speaker dock is also due out--but honestly, that just makes me cringe. The leader of the Autobots has better things to do than pump your weak iPod playlist.

(via Autoblog)