A Jukebox for Your Doll's Diner

Table sized jukebox from Our Generation Diner for 18" dolls.
It plays pre-recorded tunes.

       A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which, when one of each group entered after each other, are used to select a specific record. Some may use Compact Discs instead.

• Retro Diner Bite to Eat OG Stop Motion - from Our Generation
• American Girl Diner vs. Our Generation Diner by Totally Rudy - from 2015
• American Girl Doll Maryellen's Jukebox Review by Bigmoon

This transistor radio is built to look like a jukebox. It lights up when it's turned on and plays
whatever is being radio broadcasted in your area. I purchased this instead of American
Girl's version because I thought my little ones could learn more through the use of it. 

       Styling progressed from the plain wooden boxes in the early thirties to beautiful light shows with marbleized plastic and color animation in the Wurlitzer 850 Peacock of 1941. But after the United States entered the war, metal and plastic were needed for the war effort. Jukeboxes were considered "nonessential", and none were produced until 1946. The 1942 Wurlitzer 950 featured wooden coin chutes to save on metal. At the end of the war, in 1946, jukebox production resumed and several "new" companies joined the fray. Jukeboxes started to offer visual attractions: bubbles, waves, and circles of changing color which came on when a sound was played. 

See the music selections up-close. These are a mix of tunes
from the 70's and 80s.

       Song-popularity counters told the owner of the machine the number of times each record was played (A and B side were generally not distinguished), with the result that popular records remained, while lesser-played songs could be replaced.

• 1950's Jukebox Mix
• 1960s Jukebox Mix
• 1970's Jukebox Mix

       Jukeboxes were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, particularly during the 1950s. By the middle of the 1940s, three-quarters of the records produced in America went into jukeboxes. Billboard published a record chart measuring jukebox play during the 1950s, which briefly became a component of the Hot 100; by 1959, the jukebox's popularity had waned to the point where Billboard ceased publishing the chart and stopped collecting jukebox play data.

       The invention of the portable radio in the 1950s and the portable cassette tape deck in the 1960s were key factors in the decline of the jukebox. They enabled people to have their own selection of music with them, wherever they were. Jukeboxes became a dying industry during the 1970s, before being revived somewhat by compact disc jukeboxes during the 1980s and 1990s, followed by digital jukeboxes using the MP3 format. The greater selection and track length flexibility of digital jukeboxes offered more for the listener, with lower space requirements and operating costs making jukeboxes more attractive to establishment owners. While jukeboxes maintain popularity in bars, they have fallen out of favor with what were once their more lucrative locations—restaurants, diners, military barracks, video arcades, and laundromats.

Fonz from "Happy Days" sitcom works the jukebox, his way.

More Links to Jukebox History:

• 1950s Wurlitzer Factory Tour
• Jukeboxes: the complete history
• Comparing a Wurlitzer to a Rockola Jukebox
• The 1940s Wurlitzur jukebox, 5 cents a tune.