The Game Boy Walkie Talkie Boy

Welcome to the first in a new series documenting fresh arrivals to the collection, one piece at a time, with a note on what each one is and why it earned its place. We begin with something that is not a game, and not even an accessory for the console, but is unmistakably a Game Boy all the same: the Walkie Talkie Boy.

What It Is

The Walkie Talkie Boy, carrying the model number GBE-007A, is an early-1990s pair of walkie talkies styled to look like the original Game Boy. Sold as a set of two, each unit borrows the handheld's silhouette and grey livery, but under the shell it is a simple radio: a flexible antenna, quartz-crystal transmission, a Morse-code function, a removable belt clip and a nine-volt battery in each handset. It is a licensed piece of Nintendo merchandise from the height of Game Boy mania, when the brand was being stamped onto anything a child might want.

A Game Boy that never played a game, but will happily let you shout at your friend.

Why It Was Added

A fair question for any collection is why a device that cannot play a single game belongs in a Game Boy museum at all. The answer is exactly the point of the piece. The Walkie Talkie Boy documents how far the Game Boy's identity travelled beyond the console itself, into the everyday electronics of a child's life. It is proof that by the early nineties the Game Boy was not just a product but a look, a brand strong enough to sell a completely unrelated gadget on the strength of its shape alone.

By the early 90s the Game Boy was a shape you could sell almost anything in.

It is also genuinely rare. Toys like this were played with, separated and thrown away, and a surviving pair in good condition is far harder to find than most cartridges. Pieces of licensed merchandise sit right at the edge of what a DMG-01 collection can be, and that edge is precisely where the most revealing objects tend to live. Capturing the whole cultural footprint of the Game Boy, not just its hardware and games, is central to the museum's purpose, and the Walkie Talkie Boy is a perfect example of the wider world the console created.

This Walkie Talkie Boy is fully catalogued, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.