Dear Friends,

I bought (cheap) an interesting find last Sunday.Raised lettering
identifies it as "Fisher-Price" "Music Box - Record Player".The case is two
pieces, white top, red bottom.Top surface has song birds molded into the
front right corner.It appears as a record player, but it is really a 4.5"
disk, 22-note musical box.Disks are two-sided, plastic with projections
molded into 22 tracks on either side of 11 grooves.A yellow "tone arm"
contains the comb and star wheels and can be lifted from the disk's surface
and moved to the right, after the fashion of a phonograph.In such moving,
it remains anchored through a grove so the arm cannot be lifted more than .5"
.The base of this "tone arm" transmits vibrations to a diaphragm acting as
a sound board.A yellow on/off switch permits the yellow platter (molded
one-piece with center spindle and two register pins) to turn by
releasing/catching the governor.A yellow knob labelled "TURN" with arrows,
winds the mechanism, turning backwards as it runs down (1 revolution in about
40 seconds, which music sounds a little slow).

Since the design is child-proof, I am having difficulty disassembling it even
just to examine the star wheels and comb.There are 22 star wheels, all
working and undamaged.Alas, there are 4 teeth missing (notes 5, 8, 11,12)
but because they are from the bass end, the melody sounds just fine.A paper
label on the side reads, "Musical movement made in Switzerland"" US Pat.
No. 3,710,668 Des. Pat. D229,574"  "'71 Fisher-Price Toys, East Aurpora,
N.Y."  "Made in USA"   the top left corner has "995".
 
I have only one disk, orange plastic, "Edelweiss" and "Hickory Dickory Dock"
with the number "5".

So,.... Can anyone tell me a little about this charming "toy"?Who was the
Swiss manufacturer of the movement?I would like very much to obtain more
disks, to have a complete set.It makes good music.

A couple weeks ago, I attended a party at Neiman-Marcus where one of the
featured displays was cylinder and disk boxes sold by Reuge.They weren't
cheap!A 4.5'" disk musical box was priced at $900.  The library of
available disks was considerable, but I timed the display disk at only 20".
 At about $18-$20 per disk, that's not a lot of music, for quite a lot of
money.These had 30-note movements (I think) and sounded very nice.  But
good-gawd what a price!My find cost me $8.