Disney to Sell $50 Mix Sticks MP3 Players

September 30, 2005 By Geoff Duncan

The House of Mouse is taking on Apple this holiday season with its new $50 Mix Sticks digital music players aimed at kids.

Walt Disney Company announced it plans to sell $50 flash-based portable music players for kids and "tweens" called Mix Sticks in major retailers and at its online store beginning in mid-October.

The players will be available in four styles—Chrome, Forever Princess, That’s So Raven, and Sassy Pixie—and support MP3 and WMA audio files, as well as standard data storage. Mix Sticks feature playback controls which (surprise surprise!) form a silhouette head of Mickey Mouse; the units ship with a 128 MB capacity (Disney says this is about 60 songs, but it probably closer to 30 using common encoding techniques) but are expandable to 1 GB. Mix Sticks will also support Disney’s Mix Clips, memory cards preloaded with WMA/MMC digital albums featuring music from Radio Disney, That’s So Raven, and other House of Mouse offerings. Mix Clips will be priced at $15 each.

According to Disney, music can be loaded onto the Mix Sticks using standard music downloading software (they ship with Windows Media software; there’s no word whether Mix Sticks can be loaded using Apple’s iTunes, although Mix Sticks will not support songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store). Mix Sticks offer up to 8 hours of playback time with a built-in rechargable lithium battery; the devices are about the size of a pack of gum and will ship with stereo earbuds and a safety release lanyard.

Mix Sticks will be available from Target, Sears, Limited Too, Wal-Mart.com, and Disney’s own online store. The company will also sell a separate cases and a Disney Jam Stand with built-in speakers, which lets kids play music from a Mix Stick while recharging the Mix Stick’s battery.

Showing 4 comments

Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 10:36am 1st October 2005 Haha Geoff you are too funny man.
Geoff Duncan at 9:59am 1st October 2005 Don't forget the Mix Clips! One of them contains the Naked Mole Rap from Kim Possible!
fungku at 11:28pm 30th September 2005 I think the silver one looks sharp. They are super cheap too, so I'm thinking of getting my kid one. He'd love it.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 11:57am 30th September 2005 The high res pics of these make them look super cheap. It looks like they just slapped a candy wrapper on an otherwise boring player.