From time to time my girlfriend brings electronic children’s toys home which she found in give-away boxes. Most of the time these don’t work and i am intrigued in fixing them.

It was a beaten up “Vtech Pinguin Rasselspass”.

Inspection of the Device

Upon opening the penguin the solder blobs on the battery connector looked weird. It looked like somebody tried to fix it beforehand and applied too much heat and waaay too much solder.

After unscrewing the board i was able to move it and the solder blob detached from the board with traces (do’..). It was all burned around both connectors and a lot of gunk and dirt.

It seemed like that was the only problem with the penguin.

Removing the Solder

With a lot of patience, i finally got the solder removed and the area cleaned up with some alcohol.

Luckily for me, there was still a little bit of the original pad left, i was able to solder to. But, the connector wouldn’t be as secure and strong as it once was. I opted for 2 component glue. I don’t like glewing on PCBs…but…if it means a second life in the hands of a small child, yeah…why not.

The other pad on the other side was slightly lifted as well and i didn’t want to open this up in the next few years, therefore i decided to glue it as well, to strengthen the pad.

Resoldering

After resoldering and glueing both sides i was back in business and the penguin is happily singing away.

Conclusion

I don’t like these toys. They are noisy, they fixate the attention on them. If the child doesn’t play with it and it is switched on, it will periodically play a sound or song to catch the attention of the child.

But, i don’t want them to get e-Waste either. Toys are mostly fixable. The electronics are quite easy to understand and most of the times it is stress on the solder joints or some blown caps, because of water damages or similar.

Please don’t just throw them away and try to give them a new life. Look how happy it looks!