Toys are always fun and the older you get the more fun and expensive toys you can buy.
Any toy that teaches kids about alternative energy in a way that makes it fun for them is definitely okay in my book. I’ve seen some that are kits and a bit more complicated. Honestly, I think that this car is one of the best approaches I’ve seen. It goes for the subtle angle, it’s a fun remote control car and doesn’t need a single battery to run.
Dads who are thinking about what to surprise kids with this coming Christmas might actually end up getting the PicoZ Heli Mission for themselves (using their kids as an ulterior motive so that the wife can approve of the gifts budget).
This groundbreaking R/C mash up combines the thrill of helicopter flight with the excitement of driving a SWAT truck. Wow! It might look like a stealthy brute of a vehicle – and it is – but this macho truck features a cavernous cargo bay that opens up, upon your command, to reveal a fully-functioning micro helicopter sitting on an auto-elevating launchpad. Incredible! It’s like Thunderbirds meets Airwolf with a highly Hasselhoffian touch of 80s folly thrown in for good measure. Both precision-engineered machines are controlled via a single transmitter with smart shoulder buttons that allow you to switch seamlessly between truck and chopper.
It will take some fair bit of hand-eye co-ordination to keep on alternating between the two as you plan an imaginary assault on the enemy base. One thing though – what happens when the helicopter is in mid-air and you switch over to the truck? Will it just hover there until the subsequent instruction? Guess you’ll need to fork out £59.95 to find out!
Dolls always seem to have the strangest features, yes there are still normal dolls out there, but there are just as many oddballs. You can get babies that make noise, that pee their diaper and can even crawl away. The strangest of them all is always the one that can soil a fake diaper. Well now all the little girls of the world can have a doll to go with their Nintendo Wii.
It isn’t unusual that video games come with at least one odd peripheral to make much more realistic gameplay, but this Baby and Me Special Edition has to be one of the most unusual that I have seen.
The particular toy comes with an actual doll that the child straps the Wiimote to. Then the baby doll “reacts by giggling, gurgling or crying through the Wii remote”. From there, I would imagine a child can learn the wonders of being a mother as he or she can feed the baby and put the baby to sleep.
I am assuming that this game will take advantage of the Wiimote’s motion control feature for this. By the way, players can even get the Wii Balance Board (presumably the one from WiiFit) to rock baby to sleep, burp the baby, and teach baby to walk.
Want to own what is touted to be the smallest flying R/C device to date? The Mini HoverDrone is your cup of tea then, where it will impress virtually anyone who lays eyes upon it. Boasting a diameter that won’t surpass that of a silver dollar by much, you get a lone propeller at the bottom that helps it hover in the air, spinning and flashing its blue LED to attract attention simultaneously. A simple slider control makes way for up-and-down movement, making it a snap for virtually anyone to control it in an instant. $19.99 is the asking price for this small miracle.
For those who had Lite Brite when they were kids know that the pegs were not actually tiny bulbs in and of themselves. I remember the commercial seemed to call it “magic”, but all it was a light bulb behind a plastic pegboard with black construction paper sandwiched in between.
This is different from Sketch Art. These are individual LEDs that will light up on their own. Of course, LEDs will always need power to light up, and the Sketch Art is powered by batteries, USB cable, car adapter, or AC wall adapter. I believe that all except the batteries come with the Sketch Art kit.
I’m a little “Sketchy” as far as what actually keeps the pegs on the board itself, but the kit comes with an LED Insertion Tool and LED Extraction Tool, so they must be in there by a force better than gravity. By the way, the kit comes with 100 3mm LEDs of assorted colors.
Grown up on a diet of illusionists and magicians, that you want to emulate the careers of David Blaine and David Copperfield instead of taking the traditional engineer/doctor/lawyer route? The Freaky Body Illusions set ought to get you started on the right footing then, letting you perform seemingly “miracles” by stretching your ear to an inhuman length and levitating on the spot among others.
Perfect for scaring the local kids and giving elderly relatives a heart attack, the range of disgusting acts you can perform with this set is delightfully wide. All in all, you can take pleasure in making your audience (or just the cat if you can’t rustle one up) feel quite sick with these clever little tricks. You can snap bones in your neck, discover a disembodied hand, even tear someone else’s arm off – all with the help of the included instructional DVD. Of course, the Magic Circle might not approve of these secrets being divulged, but that won’t matter a jot when you’re merrily terrifying anyone watching you yank a blood-drenched and still-moving arm out of a box. Of course, the tricks are surprisingly simple and just require a little bit of acting (not method-acting) and rehearsal to make a convincing show. Included are all the props you could need for these illusions, such as a box (with one panel missing), a fake ear, a fake arm (with gore detail), a bone-click simulator, a fake hand and various other bits and pieces to create the impression that you’re doing yourself some irresponsible harm.
The Freaky Body Illusions will retail for £24.99 and ought to make for a really wacky gift set.
You got to admit that Ropid the robot looks like it should have been in the recently released Astro Boy movie. By the way, that movie is actually pretty good, just so you know.
Ropid is the creation of a Kyoto based group known as Robo Garage, and it has the ability to run and jump. By the way, the robot is programmed to jump with a vocal command. In other words, if you say “jump”, then the robot may not say “how high”, but it will jump as high as it can, which is 8 centimeters high.
That’s not bad considering Ropid measures 38 centimeters tall, and weighs 16 kilograms. The robot has 29 joints and four gyro-sensors, and is powered by a lithium-ion battery. By the way, the vocal commands will also run when you tell it to run, and stop when you say stop. Now if it could run and jump, perhaps it could beat the Olympic long jump record.
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