The Fisher-Price Easy Link Internet Launch Pad

Anyone else ever have random memories of things years ago and then get the urge to go down the realted rabbit hole? If so, then you can relate to what drove me to make this page. When my parents were raising my younger brother in the pre-smartphone age, they had more options to curate age-appropriate internet sessions then when they were raising me, the guy who spent his childhood quoting random YTMND sites. One of the more intuitive ones was this plug-and-play USB device released by Fisher-Price around 2007.

The premise was simple: the device launched a primitive web browser that could only access certain sites. Said sites were unlocked by 'keys' that took the form of figurines of kid-friendly licensed properties that took you to their respective home pages. The parent/guardian has a secret password to exit the browser, preventing kids from accidentally deleting their business files or other similar shenanigans. They can also set an alarm that limits screen time - on one hand, that's a lost art that needs to be introduced to modern parents. On the other, the alarm was pretty annoying if you left it running. Plus you needed the password to close it, and since neither me or my siblings had it, the computer would just play alarm clock and dog bark noises all day.

Fisher-Price being Fisher-Price, the launch package only had three keys, and you had to purchase more. I think we might have had the whole collection at one point. I'm convinced they were priming us for the whole Skylanders/Disney Infinity/Amiibo/Lego Dimensions trend. Anyway, we sold it once we outgrew it. But to anyone who wants to revisit it (like I am right now), the installation disk has been preserved on the old reliable.

It still works on an XP VM (current Windows versions won't let it), but it's practically useless if you don't actually have the toy. (I'm in the process of finding a way to rectify that, though help is appreciated.) However, the sites it would be able to originally access are stored in an XML file, so I thought it would be a fun idea to do a "where are they now" episode.

Sesame Street
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The Wiggles
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Fisher-Price
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Dragon Tales
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Barney
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Arthur
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Clifford
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Thomas & Friends
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Bob the Builder
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