October, 2022

This year my daughter planned on being Max from Stranger Things and that meant she needed a vintage WM-8 Sony Walkman to complete her costume. However what was once likely a mostly forgotten 1980's relic has now become a hot commodity, and they're now selling online for hundreds or thousands of dollars. So instead of buying one, I made a 3D printed replica. Also, to bring it up to modern times this version is an iPhone case with working headphone jack.

Using mostly photographs from Retrospekt, I created a reproduction model using Fusion 360. The dimensions of the walkman do not quite fit an iPhone SE, so this version is slightly taller.

The case splits into two pieces and is held together by the phone dock. The dock has a Apple Lightning cable to headphone adapter threaded through it that plugs into a headphone extension cable in the upper half of the Walkman. This allows the Walkman to be disassembled to insert the phone and then plugged back together. There are no functioning controls on the Walkman, so you need to use the phone's screen to start your music before closing the case.

The Walkman was spray painted with a base layer of gray and then I masked off the outer ridge to paint it black.

Finally I recreated the case graphics in Photoshop from source photos and then adjusted their proportions to attempt to hide the extra height of the replica. The graphics were laser printed onto clear waterslide transfers and then applied to the Walkman. Lastly a light clear coat was applied to ensure the graphics remain attached.

The orignal Walkman came with a neck strap but in Stranger Things, Max wears it on her belt and uses a non-Sony pair of headphones. To finish it off, a belt clip was attached to the back and a pair of headphones was painted to look close to the pair worn by Max.

The final product doesn't have all the details of the original, but came together as a convincing replica ready for Halloween!