The Internet Museum of Flexi/Cardboard/Oddity Records
 

Once bound by cereal boxes, held in the pages of a magazine, wrapped up in envelopes sent through our postal system or given away casually with some product, these bits of paper and plastic yearned to be set free to fulfill their destiny as...

PLAYABLE RECORDSCome and take an aural and visual journey through a partial history of these strange but true recorded anomolies.

http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/

I was expecting this to be something about Project Dark. If ever there was a Museum of Flexi/Cardboard/Oddity Records, they'd deserve a wing to themselves.

http://www.projectdark.demon.co.uk/catalog.htm

hmm...In the meantime........

There was a time that you could make a record when you made a visit to the top of the Empire State Building. The first ones were metal records and then they moved onto regular vinyl material. What a great momento!
Vinyl-ish record. 78 rpm, 194?.

This was a great way to hold on to memories from an event or vacation. Based on the same concept of a photo booth except you make a "Recordio-gram" to keep or send off with the handy mailing envelope also available from the machine. The additional holes in the record center kept the record firmly in place while the heavy cutting arm was recording.
Thin cardboard with laminated surface for recording. 78 rpm, 194?.

 

I have an Archies record that was pressed into the back of a cereal box.

I have one flexi disc in my collection, actually. It's from the late 80s, from some very small alternative rock label called Inca Records, and includes about 6 cuts, one each from a different band. I sent away for it basically for the cost of postage. None of the tracks made me want to go out and buy the music. Mostly power pop kinds of stuff. But it's interesting. And the sound quality, amazingly enough, is actually very good.

I love this website. have not looked at it in a whil;e. thanks gmku

Wow, thanks for pointing this out. My favorite is the skippy peanut butter cardboard record player, watching that thing work was surreal.