Sony’s Rolly: The Dancing Egg

The Speaker That Refused to Sit Still

By the mid 2000s, Sony’s identity as a creative force in portable audio was well established. The company that had invented the Walkman and then reinvented music on the go time and again was searching for a new direction in a market now dominated by digital music players. At the same time, another strand of Sony’s identity was winding down. The company had just discontinued AIBO, the robotic dog that had captured imaginations but failed to turn a profit. That led to the idea to merge Sony’s portable music and robotics. The result was a sound entertainment player that combined music playback with motion, light and dance.

Rolly might look like a curiosity now, but it says more about Sony’s ambitions than some of its biggest hits. It was the little dancing egg that summed up the company in that era.