The ORIGINAL Musical Greeting Cards

Remember the high pitched musical greeting cards that would play "Happy Birthday to You"? I think they came out in the late 80's or early 90's. Now there are greeting cards that play portions of actual recorded songs. Or, you can record your own voice on some greeting cards. 

I'm not sure how many of those cards will still be able to play even just ten years from now. But, musical greeting cards of 1950 were created in a way that they would still be playable today - 60 years later. The early 50's greeting cards had a music box inside - built to last! 

This reminds me of the difference between car windows. Everybody used to have car windows that you would crank up or down by hand. There were also little triangular vent windows that you would swivel open and closed. It wasn't a whole lot of physical effort. It wasn't as if opening a window was like churning butter or scrubbing clothes clean by hand on a wash board. But, for some reason, when automatic windows became an option, people suddenly hated cranking windows and never wanted to have to do it again. Pressing a button would take just a few seconds, as compared to rolling up a window, which may take ten seconds. Somehow the time savings of seconds was a luxury worth spending big money on.

Boy, did we value those buttons. One touch - the window goes up. One touch - the window goes down. Fresh air at just a touch. Life was good!

Until the button broke. Press. Click. Click. Nothing. No matter how many times the button was pressed, it no longer worked. If it broke while the window was stuck down, we had to manage to use all the strength we had to place both hands on either side of the window and yank it up. Then, it had to stay there permanently until we could afford to spend hundreds of dollars on fixing a button. 

This problem is not a past tense problem, unfortunately. It still goes on today. One button breaks. You hope to get it fixed soon. Then, another button breaks. You're forced to tell passengers not to roll down the window because it will get stuck down. You're forced to open the driver's side door when you go through a drive-thru just to speak to the bank teller or cashier. Little by little, if all four windows break before you have a chance to fix them, you suddenly find yourself driving in a sealed box and you hope that your air conditioner won't break. If it does, your car becomes a sauna on wheels. Been there!

So, although I appreciate the luxury of push buttons in a car to roll the windows up and down, I only appreciate them when they are working. The good old fashioned hand cranks are much more reliable, just like the 1950's music box greeting card. 

Thank you to NightFlyyer for posting this musical greeting card video on YouTube.