The new Guardians of the Galaxy movie is opening soon, and I’m looking forward to it.|

And the merchandising people are, too. As big a deal was made out of the first movie’s feel-good seventies-and-eighties-music mixtape/soundtrack, it’s not at all surprising that the soundtrack for the second movie was also a big thing well before the next movie hit the theater. But it is a little surprising, not to mention amusing, how cheap disposable MP3 player technology is suddenly playing into this.There’s nothing mysterious or magical about MP3 players. In fact, thanks to dedicated systems on a chip built just for that purpose, they’re probably one of the cheapest gadgets it’s possible to make these days. And that might be what possessed Doritos to put one in a bag of corn chips. (So, the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 soundtrack really is “all that and a bag of chips”!)

That’s right, for just $30 you too could have a bag of chips you could crunch through while listening to songs by Fleetwood Mac, Cheap Trick, and Sam Cooke on a cheap circuit board MP3 player with a rechargeable cell phone battery, 256 MB SD card, and USB plug. (Well, you could have it for about a day until they sold out, anyway. Given that it was effectively a collector’s edition publicity stunt, don’t expect them to be in stock ever again. But they’re going for big bucks on eBay!)

Something a bit less disposable is this cheap plastic replica of a Walkman which also has an MP3 player built in. Apparently it only has room for one song, though. Which makes its $25 cost most places…not all that cheap, really. You’d be better off getting one of these 19 cent mp3 players, a $3.25 256 MB SD card, and the $9.38 soundtrack CD from Amazon (which comes with instantly downloadable MP3s for free), even when you throw in $6 or so of shipping costs for the cheaper items.