Did anyone else used to watch cartoons on VideoNow?

[HunterMon17]

This was basically a toy Hasbro and Playskool used to make that let you watch cartoons on your own little device. It ran on 3 AA batteries and had a pretty low-resolution screen. They used these discs which were a tiny bit smaller than a standard DVD or CD, and could only hold 30 minutes of data. They weren't like CDs in that they played videos instead of just music, and they weren't like DVDs in that they didn't have menus or anything like that. The two models were the standard model called "VideoNow Color" designed for ages 6 and up, and the other model called "VideoNow Jr." designed to take abuse from kids ages 3 to 5. I remember Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Hit Entertainment, and Sesame Street (edited down to a half hour) all released their shows on discs for this thing.

I got the yellow and purple VideoNow Jr. model for my 3rd birthday in 2005, and had a pretty big collection of discs. I used it to watch SpongeBob, Blue's Clues, Barney & Friends, Fairly OddParents, Powerpuff Girls, Thomas & Friends, Duel Masters, Sesame Street, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Codename: Kids Next Door, Dexter's Laboratory, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dora the Explorer, Winx Club, Sonic X, Danny Phantom, Max and Ruby, Teen Titans, Batman, Transformers, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Sesame Street, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Scooby-Doo, LazyTown, The Wiggles, ChalkZone, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Catscratch, and Avatar: The Last Airbender when I was sitting in the car and didn't feel like playing games on my Game Boy Advance SP, which I got for that same birthday.

Once smartphones were invented in 2007, VideoNow pretty much disappeared from all the stores. I still used mine up until Christmas 2008, when I got a Windows Vista laptop with a DVD drive and a Nintendo DS Lite, which replaced both of those devices. I still have my VideoNow Jr., Game Boy Advance SP, and Nintendo DS Lite today, and even bust them out and play them every once in a while for nostalgia.

Does anyone else remember this?

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I remember this being a thing, but I was kind of too old for stuff like this. I thought it was cool in theory, but I had a portable DVD back in those days so I didn’t need Video Now. Ha ha

 

[ToonJay723]

I had a VideoNow with SpongeBob and All Grown Up. Don't remember which episodes though.

 

[AdrenalineRush1996]

I do remember them but I never had one of those.

 

[Pooky]

I never had one, not sure I had even heard of it at the time, but it does seem they were released in the UK, even had some discs with UK shows like Basil Brush. I did have the Game Boy Advance Video Cartoon Network Collection, which seemed quite exciting at the time.

I became quite fascinated with this stuff after watching this video last year:

Weird to think this stuff was launched and popular so close to the launch of the PSP which could play full movies in far better quality, but that was very expensive at launch.

 

[TheJLeeTeam]

No but instead I had those video cartridges for the Gameboy Advance.

 

[Dr.Pepper]

No but instead I had those video cartridges for the Gameboy Advance.

I had the Kids Next Door one.