Your youngsters can get misplaced in Disney with these story-telling headphones – TechCrunch

Some of my favourite childhood recollections embody being learn to, and studying to learn myself to get misplaced in a guide. If you’ll forgive me the oldmanyellsatcloud.gif second: It’s a grievous loss that many youngsters are so comprehensively surrounded by screens that it’s arduous to expertise this. I used to be delighted, then, to see Oranoff launch its StoryTelephones product at CES this yr. The headphones can, independently of another units you connect with them for audio playback — retailer a bunch of audio content material inside the headphones themselves. Perfect for getting misplaced within the magic of fairy tales and magic.

The firm introduced it even snagged a content material collaboration with Disney for its launch, with a group of tales for kids, bringing to their ears characters youngsters are prone to know from the large and small display. The headphones will ship with tales together with a number of the best-known characters and tales within the Disney line-up, together with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, The Little Mermaid, Frozen, The Lion King, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc. and extra. The firm claims it has a library of rigorously curated content material appropriate for kiddos aged 3 and up.

In addition to pre-recorded content material, the headphones assist one thing the corporate calls “PlayShield,” the place dad and mom can document their very own tales on a cellular app, and cargo them onto the headphones for playback later. The firm means that it’s a solution to join with grandparents and far-flung households, bringing all of them nearer by way of storytelling.

Finally, the product has a function referred to as ZenShield, which “contains relaxing audio profiles to help overstimulated kids calm down, relax and even sleep.” You can consider it as a pause button for the rowdy tykes, I suppose. The sounds embody piano music, ocean waves, raindrops and extra.

The headphones have a ProtectedAudio function in-built to maintain the amount down to stop listening to harm to delicate little youngsters’s ears, and because of this, it picked up a few CES 2022 innovation awards, within the “Headphones & Personal Audio” and “Health & Wellness” classes.

The headphones can retailer round 90 minutes of content material on its pitiful 64MB of storage – in a world the place a 4GB SD card could be procured for $4, I’m baffled why the corporate would solely embody so little user-accessible storage; maybe they’ll re-think that alternative in a future model of the headphones.

At first, the headphones are launching throughout Europe, in Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the U.Ok., and France, in 5 languages — Italian, Spanish, German, French and English. The really helpful retail worth in Europe is £84.99 (round US$115). for the US, The StoryTelephones bundle which features a headphone and both a Mickey or Minnie StoryDefend prices $99.90. The StoryShields could be purchased individually too and vary from $7.99 to $14.99.