Who doesn’t want a gigantic banana to play their vinyls? Plays 33 and 45 rpm records in any position, and comes with a carrying strap as shown in the inset.
Guessing here, but looks to me like the white thing holds the record in place. Otherwise, the record might fall off in some positions.
Photo of a surviving example,
It’s like something dreamt up by a record company:
“How can we sell more records?”
Shitty engineer: “Let’s make a portable record player that even works upside down. This will require a massive spring on the tone arm, which will wear down both needles and records at a… record pace!”
You could almost say… they went bananas. But it took a bunch of them to come up with that idea.