The Seeds’ Giant Hits

In addition to 8-track cartridges and 4-track cartridges, The Seeds were represented by one of Earl Muntz’s even more obscure formats: a small-sized 4-track tape cartridge called “Mini Twin”. The year was about 1968.

The Mini Twin may have been conceived as competition for Play Tapes, a miniature 2-track tape cartridge format that had a lot of good titles (including The Beatles but, alas, no Seeds). Collectors can rejoice that Muntz and Crescendo had the wherewithal to get together on a Mini Twin.

The catalog number on the front of this tape is MT-E-110, and the title is The Seeds' Giant Hits (as far as we have seen, all Mini Twin tapes were called [artist]’s Giant Hits.) The Seeds Mini Twin, being a smaller version of a 4-track tape, contained two programs (in stereo, hence the four tracks), with two songs each:

Program One:
“Pushin’ Too Hard”
“Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”

Program Two:
“The Farmer”
“Tripmaker”

The first two songs were from The Seeds’ debut album, and the other two were from their second vinyl album A Web Of Sound (where "Mr. Farmer" also went by its original name, “The Farmer”).  That album came out in 1966, and so that would our best guess for the year that the Mini Twin tape was released. However, it was still being promoted in 1968 (see below) and may date from 1967, when GNP Crescendo was licensing Seeds songs left and right across the globe, or even early 1968.

Porta-Four player

The Mini Twin came in a cardboard sleeve about the same size as a 4 or 8-track tape, making display easy. Covered in shrinkwrap, the back of the packing is an ad for Muntz’s Porta-Four tape player, which could play Mini Twin tapes as well as regular 4-track tapes (but not 8-tracks).

“Another First From Muntz Stereo-Pak” says a banner, with the little logo of the pirate-chapeau’d Muntz underneath. A blurb mentions that the Porta-Four “plays standard 4 track cartridges”, and the photo of the machine shows what appears to be a regular-sized 4-track tape sticking out of its side. It isn’t explained how the two sizes were accommodated by the player. Presumably there was an adapter.

We don’t have a Porta-Four player ourselves but did found a video on YouTube of someone demonstrating one. He is using regular sized 4-track tapes, though, not Mini Twins, which he doesn’t mention.

Rarity

The Seeds Mini Twin is extremely scarce — the format itself is next to impossible to find information about. It was apparently only around for a year or so and we don’t think we’ve seen a comprehensive title list. Seeds and Sky Saxon fans can be grateful (impressed, even) that the band made it to this format. And if you’re looking for your own copy, watch eBay but be prepared to be patient — it may be years between offers of this tape (or any other Mini Twin title).

Other artists’ Mini Twin tapes

We haven’t seen any reliable list of Muntz Mini Twin tapes but an ad from a February 1968 issue of Billboard lists 25 titles. We don’t know if this is everything, but there are a few interesting artists — The Kinks, Donovan, The Blues Magoos, Ray Charles. None quite as cool as The Seeds, but impressive (and all impressively rare nowadays). Note that The Seeds are the sole representatives of GNP Crescendo (as usual).

It could be that Muntz licensed these 25 titles as an experiment but that the format proved unsuccessful and was abandoned. Presumably most of the leftover stock was destroyed.

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