While doing a teardown of a toy cactus that mimics people (https://www.google.com/search?q=mimic+cactus) by recording & replaying the last few seconds of audio, we were reminded of ISD audio chips.

These record-and-playback chips have been around for decades and are a favorite with makers and engineers who want to quickly add audio prompt playback without big processing capability. These chips don't require battery backup or a flash memory chip, they keep the audio clips stored internally in a compressed format.

Originally these were popularized in use cases like "digital greeting cards" that you could record a message onto. Despite being quite old, they're still used a lot and are very simple and often available in large packages, so for many projects they're still the easiest way to do add simple sound effects or audio messages. Digi-Key has a wide range of ISD audio chips available for purchase, let's look at the large range and pick a good one to start with.

See the chosen chip on Digi-Key at https://www.digikey.com/short/pbjf0zrh