Where has Talking Carl gone?

The Original Talking Carl

Do you recognise this little guy? His name is Talking Carl, and he is one of the most popular and most famous iPhone apps around. He’s the subject of a YouTube video with over a million views (Check it out), and I think he’s a firm favourite with many little children. He’s not a free app – it costs €1.59 to download Talking Carl. There are free versions, but I have a few of them, and they never seemed to work as well, so I downloaded Talking Carl, and Little Man and I have been having great fun with it. Little Man is only just starting to talk. He has more sounds than words, but he is trying his best. When he discovered that Talking Carl repeats any noise he makes he was delighted, and he loves to say a word to Carl and hear it back.

Recently, I was quite annoyed when an update inserted advertising into this app. The advertising was in the form of a panda in the tree behind Carl. Of course, Little Man likes to press on the moving panda, but doing so opens up an advert for a talking panda app, which you can click to be taken through to iTunes to buy the app. I have a real problem with paid advertising appearing in an app that I have already paid for. I can understand when it shows up in free apps, but the rule of thumb is that if you buy the app you don’t have to deal with the advertising. And Little Man is too young to understand that the panda in the tree is different to Talking Carl and that you shouldn’t click on him.

Then yesterday another app update came through. This time the developers actually removed Carl completely from the app and replaced him with a cardboard version of himself and an invitation to enter their competition to design your own character. I was furious. There isn’t even an option to close the competition advertising version and return to the old version of Carl. Once the update goes through, that’s it – Carl is gone from your iPhone.

Here's Cardboard Carl - note the annoying Panda is still onscreen!

I searched online to find out what was happening, and discovered that the original developers of Talking Carl, tayasui, have switched publishers to Awyse, the company responsible for the recent advertising ploys and now the cardboard version of Carl. They have issued a statement to this effect:

We are deeply sorry but we are not responsible for Awyse outrageous behavior regarding Talking Carl.

They were court-ordered to stop selling the application but instead they choose to gives you this trash bag.

If like us you want your old talking carl back, you should ask them : contact@awyse.com

In the meantime, as we value your satisfaction above all things, we are working on a free version that we will give you in a few days so you can have Talking Carl back in your phone and your heart.

Again please accept our sincere apologizes and wait a few days to see Talking Carl again.
Best regards,
Carl.

So it looks like we just have to wait a few days to get an advertising-free version of Talking Carl back, which will keep Little Man happy. And we won’t be purchasing any more apps from the publisher Awyse, which will make me happy.

*UPDATE: On March 11, 2011, Awyse released an update to this app which returned Talking Carl to us in all his former glory!