I know a little about music production. I used to be one. But one thing I never fully understood was the obsession in certain quarters with buying copious amounts of hardware for making said music. It costs a small fortune, takes up loads of space and where are you going to find the money to pay for it?

Certainly not from streams on Spotify or selling your tracks on Beatport, that’s for sure. Not unless you’ve had a smash hit that’s done unexpectedly well and raked in a nice bit of money. But as the pandemic has gone up, producers have remained surprisingly willing to keep spending money on various gadgets.

And from those I’ve spoken to who know more about this than me, sales of DJ equipment have held up quite well too – although shortages of parts in the supply chain are having some effect. Hence why a number of new DJ sets have appeared on the market, and here’s the latest one. Yes, from Japan, it’s the portable Complete DJ Set from Japan’s Stokyo.

Naturally, no one knows when it’ll be out. Sometime next year, we’re told – it’ll presumably be whenever the factory is able to source enough components, like everyone else. It will come with two turntables and a mixer and will be all portable. And a quick Google search reveals it looks just like the Columbia GP3 portable turntable – these date from the 1960s and had a reputation for being very well built indeed.

But in my opinion, this looks like something out of the Fisher Price range of toys. It could well be a very good DJ set – if anyone knows, they haven’t told us yet – but it looks like the type of thing you’d give a small child for Christmas, And yes, I’m also saying the Columbia GP3 portables also look like Fisher Price toys – but at least they had the excuse of being made decades ago when people knew no better.

But then again, what do I know? It might be precisely the fact it looks like a toy which will help it sell…