Top ten Xmas toys from my childhood #4

2-XL (1980)

2-XL was an educational robot that entertained you through material recorded onto 8-track tapes that you played through 2-XL. Everything was totally interactive based on the choices you made answering questions and pressing one of the four corresponding buttons on the front panel. Essentially it was nothing but a fancy 8-track player, with each button operating a particular track. The 8-Track tapes focused around a nerdy robot with a New York accent who would speak as if the listener was right there with him wherever he happened to be in the storyline. He would ask multiple-choice questions based on the subject of the tape, and the user would answer the question he asked by pushing the corresponding button. A right answer resulted in 2-XL congratulating the user on his knowledge, while a wrong answer would result in a razzing as 2-XL explained what the proper answer was. In between questions, there would sometimes be a story going on that the user was involved with, with the answers to the questions corresponding to the story line. Other times 2-XL would crack a bad joke and laugh at his own humor with a crazy-sounding laugh that was one of the many running gags that would be found on almost every tape in the series.
I have always been known for my wealth of knowledge in useless trivia. 2-XL is to blame for that. He is where I started learning everything about anything useless. Sure he spit out educational data, but the useless trivia was the best. If you step back and look at this toy it’s basically the prototype for NTN bar trivia.