Polish Sound Postcards (Pocztówka Dźwiękowa) 

*There are links to other related videos and music in the video description.*

Oh wow - where do I begin?! My Dad was Polish, he came to Britain during WW2 and stayed. Some time in the late 70s he got a letter from his family, which happened several times a year, but this one was different: out of the envelope popped a thin amber plastic square, about 6 inches per side, and it was one of these records. It had two songs, both in Polish - "Happy Birthday" and "Roll Out The Barrel" (or Beer Barrel Polka if you prefer), and it was a source of amazement to us. Far from appearing primitive, friends and neighbours were baffled by the idea of a square record! This was a little while before the coloured vinyl craze of the early 80s (I'm aware coloured vinyl actually goes back to the origin of the 7" single), so a non-black record was also a source of amusement. I know also that Polish sailors arriving at Liverpool docks knew the novelty factor and would turn up in The Caradoc and offer to trade them for UK vinyl, apart from other Western paraphernalia. This brings back some very old memories for me Mat, thank you! 8'o)

Durring comunism era in Poland there was lack od everything - vinyl also. The cheapest way to make vinyl - like product was to press it on a plastic rectangle. I have almost 100 of music postcards and I didn't put It on my new turntable to avoid damaging it. Back in the 80' the first time I've heard Deep Purple or Rod Stewart was on postcards. Greetings from Poland! Pozdrowienia z Polski!

Fun fact - do you know why some of the sound postcards have their corners cut off? They were used as guitar picks :)

Fun fact: Bambino was called " szlifierka" what means "grinder", becuse it was destroying vinyl records. On the other hand the first versions of Bambino had build in tube amp inside and it sounds quite good.

I wasnt expecting seeing polish music postcards on this channel. Nevertheless few information from my parents who were using them back then. So the way you have played it (on the regular record as base) is the way it was done. The postcards were to soft to play them on their own. The ones you have are mostly "official" ones made by regular phonographic companies therefore they mostly contain Polish music. As they were much, much cheaper than regular record, they were popular among teens, who coldn't afford proper ones. The western music ones were produced by small private companies (back then only very small private business was allowed in Poland) by coping the track from imported/smugled record or from radio.

In communist Poland, government record companies had exclusive rights to vinyl records. However, sound postcards could have been made by craftsmen (this is how small private producers were called). Later, public institutions (often these were not record companies but book publishers that could not legally make vinyl records) also produced sound cards. Interestingly, the private ones may often not include the name of the producer so it would be difficult to determine how much they earn on this production.

Czesław Niemen sounds best even on a sound postcard. Thank you for this episode. You have many fans in Poland.

Wow. Im Polish and I've been living here my whole life, and I never knew these existed!

P.s. the main thing about these was the price. You could get records in Poland back in the day, it's just that they were expensive (and more so the record players needed to play them properly). Musical postcards, on the other hand, were a cheap and cheerful way of listening to music hits (domestic or otherwise) on your cheap and cheerful Bambino. If you had a decent set, you'd go for proper records. But if you couldn't fork out all that money, this was your other option. Teenagers loved these postcards I was told.

I met a guy at a party, very elderly. He used to play in a Beatles cover band behind the iron curtain! Tapes would be snuck across the border, and the songs would be learnt by ear and played at secret concerts. The illegal fans of western music, buying the bone records were I believe called стийлаги, or 'Stylagi', and were risking jail for their outlandish westernised tastes. When rock n roll came out finally, it was in the 80's, where as I understand it the church were pressing pop music on vinyl?!??! I cant explain this, but my friend gave me a stack of USSR vinyl like the beatles classic 'evening of difficult day' you might recognise ;) I wish I could attatch pictures and show you how bands like led zep and the rolling stones were packaged for the USSR audience! I lived in the Ukraine for a while, so Ive absorbed a lot of their culture. In fact I have a house full of things that would be gold for you to review on the channel, and I live in the Uk, so if your looking for new stuff to feature I could drop you an email if your interested! :)

Thanks for the great stuff! I was supposed to episode myself. I remember these posts cards, my parents listened to that. Especially that postcard about the Warsaw taxi driver caught my memory ... Greetings from Poland.

Me as a kid: watching programs about future technology Me now: watching programs about past technology

Those sounded a million times better than I was expecting

Hello from Russia. The answer to "why square" was that those types of records were often included in printed media such as magazines as a bonus or supplement - like some magazines later included CDs. You can see some were torn from staples near one of the edges. They were usually stapled together with paper pages in the center of the magazine - where paper pages folded. The same also explains why they were so small and often rectangular *DISCLAIMER* : I'm reciting that from memory of my childhood, so may easily misremember something. Sorry about that. Any corrections are welcome! There were in fact magazines which primarily consisted of those records with few pages of accompanying text attached - they could be subscribed to like a normal magazine - and you periodically got fresh music delivered to your postbox EDIT: According to wikipedia, apparently there were two such magazines in Russia - one for adults and one for children - issued from 1964 till 1992. Adult one also featured some journalist reports and soviet propaganda of sorts. The records were produced using french-manufactured equipment. I remember some kids books came with those, containing a song or two related to the book. I'm sure there were other uses but I was too young to care back then. I never heard about a postcard like that though. Although you would think swapping tapes would immediately obsolete the records you are wrong - tape recorders were quite expensive and hard to get while the tape was expensive and fiddly, record players were much more affordable and popular. And we were generally quite poor so entertainment industry was way smaller than in capitalist countries and often used aging and obsolete technology. Couldn't find many photos with those still attached, but here are a pair of them: avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-zen_doc/1064817/pub_5c5ab9e968d9ff00ade0cc3b_5c5ac6e3e2b03f00ad966827/scale_1200 avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-zen_doc/1612125/pub_5d3bf1e8ae56cc00addefb5c_5d571143e6cb9b00ad125a75/scale_1200 those are half-circle half-square (from aforementioned magazines), but some were definitely released as just squares - probably to ease cutting

My family used to send these to friends and family just for a bit of fun - they were cool at the time, and this was before the internet and also, not many people had phones in their homes so writing to each other was much more common. They sent whatever was popular or what they liked - no politics involved! And btw regarding the copyright issues, until the early 1990s, Polish Radio would regularly announce to its listeners when it would be broadcasting an entire album live so you could get your tape recorders at the ready and get the whole album on tape for free! Most of the time it was the only way to get hold of these albums because they weren't generally available.

In those days, getting original records was almost impossible. That's why people were recording songs from the radio themselves. Even there were special broadcasts where the announcer said "please get ready to record" and people had full songs, no one was concerned about copyright. Someone who sent discs from abroad gained the most popularity among friends. Regards from Poland !

You really haven't heard the Tra La La La La song until you've heard it etched in an old xray...

I am 50 years old and I am from a generation for whom it was also a past. We listened to music on the radio. The Polish state radio broadcast in stereo in good quality all the best albums, often on the day of the premiere - without interruptions. We had access to everything without a problem. Also Polish recording equipment was of good quality. The only problem was the purchase of cassette tapes. These Polish products were of very poor quality and had to be bought abroad, or in stores called PEWEX - all Western goods available for US dollars were there. The currency was bought illegally, but the authorities allowed it. The exchange rate was cosmic, but for a month I was able to persuade my parents to buy one TDK, BASF, Maxell cassette. ;)

As long as I recall, these were being sold in an orange envelope with the name of the artist and the song. Don't have many of these, but these allowed me to listen to John Lennon's "Woman" for the really first time.They were also able to give you better sound quality, it had minimal amount of hiss in mid-80's. I also remember that if you had Bambino, then no one'd lend you any vinyl records, just these... Greetings from Manchester.

"He must've covered every music format now" - Me, prior to knowing about a Communist Poland postcard & X-Ray printed music format.

There's a vinyl album by polish group called Papa Dance that has a ZX Spectrum program on it : ) Another fun polish oddity.

That was a really interesting look in to what on the face of it appears to be a quite unique slice of Polish culture. I suppose the nearest we got are musical birthday cards and they sound even worse. Whilst the sound quality is not the best by a long shot, I was surprised at how good they were when you consider the age and the fact they have probably been kicking around in a draw for the past half century. I would imagine vinyl would be pretty beat up stored in the same way without a sleeve. Most enjoyable, well done Matt.

4:23 "(hej) za rok matura (o dużo czasu)... za pół roku..." ~Czerwone Gitary. Never thought I would hear polish music on the channel. :D Such a weird and funny to watch. Great video. Thank you for making it.

Techmoan: Makes video about Polish Sound Postcards Polish people: clicks video Techmoan: STONKS

Techmoan needs to build a public Museum of Audio Technology & Media Formats

I first danced with my wife to "Warsaw Taxi Driver" ; )

My uncle and grandma told me about these and I have some of those in my collection. Interesting thing about them is that there were two main types : a "pirate" one, pressed at the kiosks and the "official" one, pressed by normal, "government-approved" record plant. The main difference between them was, obviously, the sound quality - the pirate ones varies in that ("shady" master tape, rudimentary cutter etc.) but the official ones (you have at least one of those, it's the one with Muza label) were cutted from studio-grade tapes and using standard vinyl cutter so even when there's a lot of hiss and crackles, the audio tone is rather solid. Those official ones were made even in the early 80's and were made from paper with laminated top side with the track. Even the western music made it's way onto "those official" - I have a Precious Wilson "We are on the race track" on one of those and it sounds okay.

I just recently discovered this channel. Not only are his videos all very interesting, but the biggest thing that was apparent to me immediately is that there is ZERO nonsense here. He's not wasting our time with lengthy splash screens, plugs for socials, giveaways, or just the way that so many people out there try to trail you along without really saying anything to get to algorithmically convenient timestamps. There is no click bait in any of his videos. So refreshing. And it's nice to know I now have a nice library of quality and interesting content to sift through when I'm bored.

Matt , when the Iron Curtain came down Russia started to allow (grey market) LPs to be available however because of a paper shortage the sleeves were often re-purposed maps. I have Beatles Rubber Soul which when you look inside the “mouth” of the sleeve there’s a map in Russian of a Japanese harbour area (we checked the co-ordinates) ..interesting social-political history.

I've been told that people manufacturing these were quite sneakiny and acting quick. A song, which had premiered on the radio in the evening, could have been "published" as a postcard next morning. Such situations were not unheard of. BTW, you've published the video on 1st of May, Labour Day for many countries around the World, which used to be very important holiday back in the times of People's Republic of Poland. There's an annual tradition: Polish Radio 3 plays only local music on days like this - and today a DJ was asked by a listener to explain younger viewers what sound postcards used to be, because back in the day they had enormous impact on the musical taste of the nation, arguably more significant than the vinyls published by the major, state-run publishers. Like, there was no official pressing of T-Rex back then. Keep up the good work, Techmoan.

You picked really good date to release this video! 1 may is workers day and 3rd is our constitution day. Very fitting for our postcard era of music!

Today is National Flag Day in Poland, so perfect timing for such a video. I remeber finding those postcards in every country holiday home when visiting friends but I grew up in the 80s so the main format of music was a cassette tape. As for WHY they were produced- they were cheap, they were easier to carry around, because of weight and they didn't break as easily as proper vinyl when you would drop them. The quality was not worse than AM broadcast at the time and also writing letters and postcards was very popular in Poland. Combine those factors and voila- you have recipe for success. I am more surprised as why this form of music wasn't popular in other countries. Again, brilliant video Mat, thank you.

Hi huge fan of your channel and as a polish bloke, I greatly appreciate coverage of this topic. Great video and as always, stay safe ;)

Those Postcards were very popular due to its price. You could buy them everywhere in the 60-70s. Due to the lack of music sources and good equipment for playing music in that time those postcards has been some kind of singles. LP records were very expensive and many people couldn't afford to buy it so post soundcards has been adopted to spread and release singles around the country. Most of those cards was collectable and people share those cards between each other. As you mention in the clip - most popular vinyl player in that time was Bambino which quality was tragic in compare to the vinyl player from the west but those cards sounded ok on it that time. Due to its natural wear and degradation - people even repaired such records using hot needle! In the 70s if you were lucky enough you could buy a reel2reel tape recorder and copy such post cards on a tape or record music from radio. Even I was born in the middle of 80s and still remember that I have used to play recordings from such old fashioned reel2reel player from Unitra ZRK ZK 127 like this one : allegro.pl/oferta/magnetofon-szpulowy-unitra-zrk-zk-127-vintage-prl-9196510853

The nostalgia this video gave me is beautiful, I love being polish

I was born in the GDR and my best friend is polish. Makes me always smile when i see something like this, or when she is talking about creative things from her past in poland. We guys simply HAD to be creative in a lot of ways. And sometimes it was even fun.

As most of my compatriots chimed in already, I'll just say that didn't expect to hear Niemen or Czerwone Gitary on Techmoan. And I thought nothing would surprise me after seeing Captain Disillusion on Objectivity or Matt Parker on 8-Bit Guy... Great job as always!

Fascinating! Makes me think of the record I cut out of the back of a box of "Sugar Smacks" cereal as a child!!

its still a cutting edge technology if you cut the edges and make it a circle

Im from Poland and watch this channel 4 years. Greetings from Poland.

Tego to sie nie spodziewalem :)

4:23 when you have "polish A Level" in the next month. You don't want think about this so you watching english video on YT and you hear polish song from 60's about a level

My parents had theirs marriage vowes recorded on one of them

In my mind, I was imagining a Polish version of mission impossible and the recording would go "Good afternoon Mr. Nowak, the P.M.S has detected......This record will self destruct because it was played in 5 seconds."

The amount of Tech History I discover on this chanel is ludicrous. Seriously, I'm nearly 45 and I never knew almost all of the things you showcase ever existed!

As a Pole it's always surreal seeing pieces of PRL tech popping up on UK and US YT channels! Awesome!

Wow those brought back a few memories, but contrary to what you suggested I can reveal that they were often also used to send whole recorded messages from one family to another without containing any music. I suspect that these more personal messages have simply not been published, as their content is of less general interest, but I well recall listening to them when the nanny who looked after me, who came from Poland, received them from her family back at home. You have to remember that back then, in the mid 60’s, making a phone call from London to Warsaw required making an appointment to be connected. When you eventually got through, often at 2am in the morning, the quality and volume would be awful, and the conversation was hardly private either, with every operator and censor between the two destinations undoubtedly listening in. Stray too far from pleasantries and the call was apt to be abruptly “lost” as I can remember happening on several occasions. So sometimes these audio postcards were used, along with letters sent via other routes or addresses, to work together to convey more sensitive and private information, in a way which would not attract the attention of censors, because only part of the story was in the letter, and part on the separately posted disc. Either on its own seemed innocent enough, but interpreted together, by someone who knew the sender, they would reveal far more.

9:56 there wasn't any attention given to copyright because proprer copyright laws did not exist in Poland until late 90's

Glad I looked at my phone for a last time before I went to bed

8:31 This is because there's an established narrative in the West honed through the decades that says that anything coming from the Soviet bloc has to be seen through the lens of people yearning to escape a constant oppression and with an unquenchable hunger for Western goods and culture. Now people in the Eastern bloc did have a hunger for world culture as they were quite cosmopolitan but the tired narrative of everyone just being some sort of prisoner who can only find freedom through western (more often than not "American") consumer goods unfortunately works to cheapen and obscure the depths and contrasts of the actual lived experience of people at the time. Not to use the "P" word, but that's basically what that narrative is. Cool music on those postcards!

The idea that you go into a kiosk that is automated and leave a message on it and then make a mix (tape) and send it off really truly fascinates me, that is honestly really really cool, It's quite a personal gift, If you have ever listened to a new piece of music that you really truly enjoy, that first time you hear it it's like liquid joy being poured over you're brain, imagining hearing a family member or person you care for but haven't seen in a longtime giving you that. Vinyl never went away, and its kind of re-surging, this is a good idea, make a web page and when you commission a short little 45 or something send in a wav file with your message and after its made its send onto the recipient, i bet people would use it.

Brings me back to my childhood cutting Jackson 5 and the Archie's from the back of cereal boxes...

Greetings from 🇬🇧. I'm from Poland and I remember this things 😁

I grew up in Poland in the 60s and 70s and western music wasn't officially banned or prohibited, like e.g. books by George Orwell. It was just extremely hard to buy (as was everything else). In 1979 the national music publisher Tonpress produced a Beatles double-EP with 7 songs and if you bribed a sales lady with a big box of chocolates, she would save you one, since the entire pressing would sell in a few hours. And if you were one of the lucky few with a family abroad so you could get a passport and travel, and brought back some records, the customs officers were never interested in them, as I know first hand - my dad was a violinist in the National Philharmonic, traveled a lot with the orchestra, so I had a nice collection of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. - which made me a hero in school :)

Techmoan, you just made me go through my collection of records and I found quite a few of those "postcards". One of them has Paul Anka's "Crazy love" and "Goodbye my love" pressed on it (it's also slipped into a nice paper sleeve that is quite like a 7" single sleeve but without a hole in the middle). Foreign ones were quite rare but not impossible to find. I also found an oddity (auditty?) - at a first glance very similar to the "sound postcards" (those thin, floppy ones made of semi-transparent plastic), but when I examined it, it turned out to be a 33 1/3, 7" record, sold as a part of a Soviet magazine "Krugozor" ("Кругозор"). You'd pull or cut these records out of the magazine and listen to them on a record player. They were double sided, and mine contains Elton John's "Shooting star" and "Madness" on one side, and songs by Irina Sokhadze (Ирина Сохадзе) on the other. Unfortunately, my Russian is still too poor to find the latter artist's song titles by lyrics (and there's no track listing). From what I found in Russian wikipedia, these records were pressed in France until the end of 1991, and fully superseded by compact cassettes in 1992. There is a photo of this magazine containing these records referred to as "floppy records". I can't tell anything more than Russian wikipedia - I'm a bit too young to know the details (I was 7 when they stopped issuing "Krugozor"), maybe someone a little older (and a reader of Russian magazines) could shed some more light on this topic. I'll certainly ask my parents... Anyway, as always, a great video! And thank you for a Polish accent this time! Pity you didn't try to pronounce "pocztówka dźwiękowa", though - I don't think someone might get offended. We are always very happy to hear someone at least trying to speak our language, because we know it's one big tongue breaker. Stay safe and healthy!

whoa! i have one from the 50s, but it’s from Sweden. it’s an early recording by Swedish Jazz singer Monica Zetterlund under a fake name (Eva Norén). i think the one i have is Love Letters in the Sand. it’s a really cool item because it’s a recording that only got an official vinyl release on the postcard!

How can I watch this channel for years and still see media I never knew existed!

Great video! It recalls many memories from my childhood - I had a small collection of sound postcards with short bedtime stories and poems for kids. :) As far as I know, sound postcards issued by Polish state-owned companies usually contained Polish music (there were also those with Western music, but there were few - if foreign music was published, it was usually a music from other socialist countries). RSW was one of the companies involved in the production of sound postcards (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prasa-Książka-Ruch). In addition to publishing activities, this company also dealt with mass distribution of their own and third-party publications via their shops and kiosks network. Sometimes these sound postcards were added to magazines as well: I remember such publications from the late 1970s and early 1980s (due to my age, I could only come into contact with the decline phase of this phenomenon). Anyway, in the mid-1980s it was a rarity. Sound postcards were also manufactured by small private companies - often they were one-man "factories". These usually contained unlicensed Western music and were sold at marketplaces. It was a kind of black-market activity caused by very limited access to Western music. Their greatest popularity falls in 2nd half of 1960s and they began to disappear in 1970s with the spread of tape recorders.

Thank you for putting the song links!! I liked a few.

Records from X-ray photo's.. As always I'm amazed by your knowledge of media.

Greetings from Poland! :D

I love this. Not only does it remind me of sitting around with mom and dad listening to records when we were little, but the concept is just great. There is something personal and awesome about these that modern items will not match for me :D

As always, great video! Thanks very much for all your efforts making these most enjoyable videos!

the audio quality of some of these is surprisingly good all things considered

Absolutely fascinating, thank you as always!

Absolutely fascinating. I subscribed for your dash cam reviews but now this pops up!

I was having few in actually postcards size with typical (for Poland) postcard printing on back. One with writed text and post stamp. My collection was 100% polish songs or children stories. Yes the was sold alongside normal vinyls, primary target was children song and stories. Or something like anniversary stuff for polish cinematic, tv shows, famous artis etc.

I used to play around with these as a kid in my aunt's place, she had tons of them and an old Unitra turntable, it instilled my love for records. As far as I'm aware western music was usually produced on cardboard ones, and these were very quickly worn to shreds at house parties, which explains why most of them didn't survive... I do however have few of these myself, and among them a copy of Rolling Stones' Satisfaction and Twist and Shout by the Beatles. I believe the later plastic ones were produced alongside regular records as a cheap alternative. If you want to get a full story of these, I would suggest reaching out to Marek Niedźwiedzki from Polish Radio, he has a encyclopedic knowledge of history of music in Poland. In any case, I never imagined I would hear Czerwone Gitary in a Techmoan video :D

I didn't expect the song on the cards sounded so nice!

I like the info you give about vinyl related things. Great stuff

as always, a nice movie. I get up in the morning, turn on YT, look ... and I can't believe it. Polish sound postcards. Greetings from Poland. we like watching your movies here. you are showing electronic gadgets from earlier years, which in Poland we could not even dream of once, because we did not know that they exist.

So I just asked my mom about these and she said that for her (80's kid) these were like a fancy novelty, like hologram cards. Apparently my great grandmother had a collection of them but didn't let my mom or uncle use them lmao. We're not sure if she still has them, but I will definitely ask her next time I visit Poland (so whenever they take away their nonsensical quarantine)

love the videos man! really interesting stuff

this is an absolutely fantastic video!, its great getting to see unique music formats like these postcards :)

Thank you so much for posting the links to the songs. Just discovered some awesome Polish rock!

Fascinating, as always. Lo-Fi or not, those are pretty damn cool.

Thank you so, so much for that video. I clicked on it instantly and gave a thumbs up without viewing ;) I have a lot of those from my father. If you need anything (translation, identifying songs or performers) - I'm here

I have something similar - in 1958 my Mum sent my Dad a postcard with a record cut into the front. I still have it and it still plays!

Barry Norman the tv presenter, springs to mind when I listen to your voice.very similar in the way he used to talk about the latest film on the cinema review programme.very professional

This is like the back of USA Cereal box records.....I knew as a child

Polski akcent. Dziękuje jako subscriber.... :)

My first postcard was Carlos Santana - Samba Pa Ti - RU-vid and Europa about 1976-77 it started my experience with a music.When they were new the quality was a little better.Thanks to this, we had a chance to play music from behind the iron curtain.There was a cold war and everything was blocked.And that was a way to bypass censorship.Thank you for what you did.Regards

Hello @Techmoan i realy enjoy your videos and learn always something new about things i dont now wich is awsome , i watched till the moment when you put the record when my mom comes in to my room and recognizes the second song she told me a few thing about these records( she is from poland ) this was one the first time in a few years that she lookes realy happy and remembers things from the time she lived in poland , that was awsome :D , i casualy clicked on the first youtube link that was in the description , (i didnt know the artist ) and it was violetta villas , the first 5 seconds and my mom burst in to tears the song is about the violetta wich emigrated in the 60ties to the us to make caarer as a musican its a song about homesickness and she wrote it to her mom ( my mom loved my grandma from deepest heart and realy miss her [my grandma died in 2007] ) also my mom told me that the lp`s in this time were realy expensive and at the time it was cheaper for them to buy just one of these cards than a whole album i still thank you very much for this video and for your dedication - Max. Jankowski

When the back up turntable that you don’t mind risking is a highly collectable, relatively expensive Sound Burger haha ;)

I remember back in the 70s Franken Berry Cereal had a special box with Monster Mash on the back. We had to cut the back off the box and the play it on the stereo. I thought that was so cool.

Honestly, better quality than I would've expected for something cut into a laminated postcard.

Greetings from Poland! Thanks for making this video.

God, this sound not that bad, this have some nostalgia :) Greets from Poland ♥️

fun-fact: cut-off corners of those non-paper ones (like that @7:24) were often used as guitar picks. :) also - please not the way you handle them - and multiply that by years of similar treatment. originally they were just slightly worse that "real" singles.

Again, an amazing piece of history. Thanks for sharing.

This has been one of my favorite channels on RU-vid for years now. Every time you think you know something about tech, Matt always schools you on something you've never heard of and I always look forward to a new video.

I have to say, I enjoyed "Marionetka" (polish puppet on a string) very much :)

A little addendum to this video (which is excellent, "as always"), to further broaden the picture. As some others have already mentioned, sound postcards were produced in several countries in the soviet block, including my home country, Hungary. Here they ran under the brand name "Colorvox", they have a wikipedia page even (quite in Hungarian though): hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorvox . According to that page, they were produced from 1959 on. They were not considered as a substitute for proper vinyl records, they were just a novelty, intended to be really sent as "sounding postcards". Today they are collectors' items. As for the plastic version, I also remember soviet kid's magazines and materials in support of learning Russian with those blue transparent flexible records in them. The rationale was that as they were flexible, they could be added to a magazine or book, just as a QR-coded video URL nowadays. Otherwise from the 1960-s on, tape recorders weren't uncommon in the soviet block and the vinyl production wasn't that bad at all in most of these countries. By the nature of the era, it was hard to get the the pop music from the other side of the curtain, which was surely bad, like many things around back in the day. Albeit I'd rather go for the great Polish jazz of the 1970's anyway, but it is of course a matter of taste...

Wow thats a nice thing from the past. Thanks for the video !

I never supposed that Techmoan will say anything about Polish pseudo-vinyl postcards. Greetings from Poland, I'm your fan since 2016 and you're one of the best channels.

really want to add 1 of these to my collection as someone who has collected both postcards and music over the years

Oh my! I recently got hands on my grandma records, and she got few of them! My father told me she used to play those records on 'bambino' turntable which was awful and had the tracking force capable of succesfully destroying record :D And later in 80s he bought himself a sanyo boombox for incredibly large amount of money - 100 dollars, weird times i guess, i am really thankful that i can get all this cool and unreachable stuff from 80s really cheap compared to the prices back then! Edit: surprised to see this turntable in the video!

As always thanks for posting videos.

Thank you for the very thoughtful video. I enjoyed the well-reasoned discussion.