I was inspired by this incredible video of Mr. Incredible proclaiming
that he possesses the ability to propel himself, in such a way, that
he can destroy and traverse through walls. Strangely, Mr. Incredible
also didn't look like his normal self, and he sounded like he had
just swallowed a handful of pebbles.
I knew exactly how to replicate the effect, and by then I had already
done so much research on circuit bending that I just wanted an easy,
quick project. I found a cheap listing on Ebay and bought it, with
it arriving roughly two days after I ordered it.
The first minor issue was that one of the batteries exploded, and
rusted one of the contacts in the battery compartment. I checked the
label, and they said they were good until 2016. I also tried to look
for any screws or means of accessing the board making the sound, but
there were none that were exposed from what I could tell.
Which was fine anyways. All I needed was to control the voltage going
into the board. Since I couldn't find any screws to even remove the
old battery compartment, I melted the plastic using my soldering
iron and broke off chunks as needed, making sure the integrity of
the toy itself and its looks were not compromised. Circuit bending
is mostly about looks, anyway.
I melted out the battery compartment (Which is unusable anyway) and
tested the toy using my bench power supply. As I turned the voltage
up and down, Mr. Incredible would pitch up and down, before
dissolving into a weird unintelligible gargle. I also measured that
the toy only consumed a max of 2-3 mA when speaking, which quelled
my fears of the potentiometer frying.
Using a 10k guitar pedal pot, I made an easy voltage divider and
swapped in my own battery holder. I drilled a quick hole roughly 2cm
from the base of his neck and fitted the potentiometer into place.
The finished product is nearly indistinguishable from the original
toy, but now he has a frankenstein-like screw sticking out of his
back.
I wasn't able to get very many good photos of Mr. Incredible
post-operation since I had to send him to his home planet to hide
amongst his people, to later infect and obliterate his society from
the inside out.