World's smallest karaoke machine starts them young

Japan's toy giant Tomy employee displays the world's smallest personal karaoke cube "Hi-kara", 7cm cubic machine with 2.4-inch LCD display and microphone equipped headphone at a preview of the annual Tokyo Toy Show, on June 17. Tomy will launch the machine in October, targetting children who are too young to go to "karaoke box" parlours.

A Japanese toy maker will launch a karaoke machine measuring a mere seven centimetres (2.8 inches) this year, letting pop star wannabes -- particularly children -- hone their skills on the go.

Tomy Co. Ltd. said it would begin sales of the world's smallest karaoke machine in October in Japan, targeting those who are too young to enter the karaoke parlours that dot the country's cities.

The Hi-kara machine comes with headsets, meaning that only the users can hear the music.

"Absorbed in the music from the headphones, I found myself singing in an embarrassingly loud voice," Tomy spokeswoman Mei Kudo said.

The machine, which can also be used with a second set of headphones or put on speaker mode, targets elementary school girls who adore pop stars.

"Their mums and dads are also from a generation who grew up with karaoke," she said.

Tomy plans to sell the Hi-kara abroad as well, but no date has been set for that launch.

The machine will be priced at 10,000 yen (100 dollars). Players will have to buy a 2,000-yen cartridge that holds 10 pre-installed songs or they can download 10 songs over the Internet from a choice of 3,500 titles.

Karaoke has turned into a multibillion-dollar industry since being invented in 1971 by Daisuke Inoue, a Japanese club keyboardist looking to provide music for a customer who wanted to sing on a company trip.

A new trend in Japan is "hitokara" -- literally "lone karaoke" -- which means going out to sing karaoke alone.

Š 2008 AFP

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