Big Mouth Billy Bass - The Singing Sensation

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The idea to create a novelty gift out of a singing fish mounted to a plaque didn’t come to its creator, Joe Pellettieri, overnight. Since Pellettieri first joined the Gemmy Industries team in 1998, he had already given new life to one of their primary products, a singing flower named Sunny, which landed him a promotion to vice president of product development. As a follow-up to this success, Pellettieri tried to dream up Gemmy's next big animatronic product. As much as one could in the new millennium, Big Mouth Billy was riding the influencer train. Just as Pellettieri had predicted, the toy caught consumers hook, line, and sinker. Surprise your friends with this rare catch!” exclaimed the product description for the now legendary Big Mouth Billy Bass novelty product, which debuted 20 years ago, early in the year 2000, at an Atlanta gift convention . “This realistically-detailed Large Mouth Billy Bass looks ordinary enough. But when he senses an unsuspecting admirer, he flaps his tail and sings them a song!”

A Teensy 4.1 or Teensy 3.2 is used to power [Kevin]’s various singing fish builds. There are two motors inside a singing fish, typically — one motor to pivot the fish’s body, and one to open and close the mouth. Hook these up to a motor driver, and command that with the Teensy, and you’re up and running. To sync the fish with the music, MIDI data is sent to the Teensy over USB. The Teensy takes in note data and uses this to command the motors to make the fish appear to sing along. The Big Mouth Bass song has been featured prominently in many different media outlets. It can be heard in the movie Finding Nemo (2003), as well as television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present) and The Simpsons (1989-present). It has also been featured in various video games, including Super Mario Sunshine (2002) and Crash Bandicoot (1996). Additionally, it can be heard playing at theme parks across the globe. Billy's actual voice is reserved for a few setup messages and "Fishin' Time," a bizarre honky-tonk song. Unlike older Billy Bass units, this model is not motion activated, and does not sing "I Will Survive," "Take Me to the River," or any song other than "Fishin' Time." Once again, and I can't repeat this enough, Billy is not a speaker. Bensch: We here at the Strong Museum of Play have a Big Mouth Billy Bass. We got one in 2000 because it was one of the hot things from that year. So here is one more blog post about how to make Billy Bass into a Smart Fish. By using the Echo Dot instead of a Raspberry Pi you get all the first party Alexa capabilities like Drop-In calling. That being said, you can't be quite as intelligent about what kind of sounds Billy is making. It might be fun to revisit this with Alexa in a Raspberry Pi so I could write some different animations when voice is detected, or even add another layer of audio processing so it sounds like the fish is under water. But I'll have to leave that for a rainy day.

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Big Mouth Billy Bass Cupholder: A spinoff Billy Bass product made in 2000. The mouth is hollow so it can hold your drinking cup. It can be activated by squeezing the lower half of the head. It plays "Take Me To The River" and "Don't Worry Be Happy" just like the original. After receiving his MBA in marketing and finance from Indiana University, he worked as a buyer for various department stores around the Midwest. But after a decade of retail work, he went looking for “the next big thing.”

Echo Dot disassembled. The green PCBs connected by the ribbon cable are all we need. You can re-assemble the empty Dot case and gift it to a friend. The road, or river, to success for Billy Bass was anything but easy. In fact, Joe Pellettieri’s idea was rejected numerous times before garnering the necessary approvals for production. Not only did Pellettieri have to painstakingly draft blueprint after blueprint to refine the design, but he struggled to nail down the fish’s "wow" factor, which is essential to the success of any novelty toy. Scott, Amy (December 18, 2019). "Remember Big Mouth Billy Bass? Of Course You Do". Marketplace . Retrieved May 9, 2021.

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Bartkowiak, Mathew J. (October 19, 2012). Sounds of the Future: Essays on Music in Science Fiction Film. McFarland. ISBN 9780786456505 . Retrieved November 4, 2017. a b c Schuessler, Heidi (December 14, 2000). "Getting Under the Skin of a Fish That Can Get Under Yours". The New York Times . Retrieved November 12, 2022. There is also an extremely rare 2005-2006 re-release version of the original 1999 model which has Big Mouth Billy Bass Jr’s skin design with "Irving, TX" removed and ON/OFF being replaced with ON/SENSOR.

That all changed with a not-so-simple question to Gemmy’s engineers in China: “Can you make the head turn?” Since then, Bill Dance has continued to be an influential figure in bass fishing and has gone on to make many more memorable catches. However, his biggest bass remains as one of his most impressive accomplishments to date. What was the name of the singing fish Big Mouth Billy’s mobility was the magic-like catalyst that kept audiences enthralled. And it’s what got the brass at Gemmy to finally sign off.In 1990, Bill Dance was fishing at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. As he cast his line into the lake, he felt a tug on the other end. After a thrilling fight lasting nearly 20 minutes, he finally reeled in an impressive largemouth bass. The fish weighed in at 11 pounds and 4 ounces, making it one of the largest bass ever caught in that lake. The heyday of Big Mouth Billy Bass would only last about nine months or so before it began to wear out. The product was so big and had been gifted to so many people that a crash was inevitable, especially for a product whose main pull was its surprise factor. Its demise would only be aided by the countless other iterations and ripoffs, some made by Gemmy themselves to keep the momentum going, while others were made by competing companies trying to get in on the craze. By that fall, the product had already begun to be marked down, and by Christmas, it was in the discount bins, having already been gag-gifted to countless fishermen earlier in the year.