Bandai's Luminodot: 1,600 glass pegs for your child to swallow

[Via technabob]
Hasbro posts


We've all seen those cheesy kiosks at the mall with some guy trying to sell you a controller with "8,000 games" built right in, which you can plug directly into your television for about three minutes of actual enjoyment, but now Hasbro is hoping to add a shade of respectability to the plug-and-play controller game market with its $24.99 NET JET device. The USB controller plugs directly into your PC (sorry, Mac users), and once you insert your "game card" of choice into the controller, it navigates to an online web portal where the corresponding game is launched and played on your screen. Hasbro offers up a variety of somewhat kid-centric titles at $14.99 apiece, including Marble Blast XP, Kool Kart Racers, Super Soaker Water Fight, and the obligatory SpongeBob SquarePants' Pizza Toss. Ideally, this wouldn't be a bad solution to laptop gaming for your offspring on lengthy road trips, but you should be sure to get a 3G-equipped lappie before taking this out where the WiFi doesn't roam.
While your teenage daughter might prefer something a bit more sophisticated, and your male child is probably rippin' it up right now on Guitar Hero, Hasbro's Tiger Electronics is coming out with an axe designed to let little tykes learn their favorite tunes without all the complicated (and pricey) lessons. The Power Tour electric guitar will come with 12 pre-loaded songs, and the string-free instrument will rock a bevy of sensors on the fretboard and body, which will allow youngsters to play along as they follow the light patterns with the music. Additionally, it's slated to have an aux input, allowing users to plug in any song they choose and jam along, but there's no word on whether or not that sweet pictured amp comes along in the bundle. Nevertheless, this kid-friendly guitar could actually find its way into quite a few musically-challenged adult hands as well when it lands in August for a currently undisclosed price.
Considering that it has been made explicitly clear that iPods are not meant to be eaten or chewed on, the popular DAP is pretty much ruled out as a contender for the ears of our wee young ones. Thankfully Hasbro-subsidiary Playskool and Creative have teamed up to make sure that baby Apple isn't left out of the loop (you could be missing a key demographic, Steve). The "Made For Me" line of MP3 players is pretty scarce on details, but what we do know is that it comes preloaded with 50 songs, has a voice recorder, and can be used with other appropriately labeled "Made For Me" toys (sounds familiar). The device should be available come fall and is expected to retail for about $80. While we'd personally just stick a stereo in our kid's room and call it a day, we will reserve judgement and leave the parenting to the parents.
Remember the Uncanny Valley? It's that place where robots look very much like the biological entities that they're meant to emulate, but just dissimilar enough to give them a very creepy appearance. Well we'd suggest that Sega Toys' upcoming Dream Pony falls squarely into the valley, as the 4-foot tall bot certainly resembles a real mini horse -- though as you can see in the pictures (both here and after the jump), it probably has the potential to really freak people out. Nonetheless, Sega is confident that this latest addition to its zoo of robotic pets will be popular enough among little girls (and immature men such as ourselves) that it can move 10,000 of these strange toys per year. Since you wouldn't pay $600 for a stuffed animal that just sat around looking weird, Dream Pony -- a virtual doppelgänger for Hasbro's Butterscotch -- responds to visual, audio, and tactile stimulation by jerking its head around or emitting a frightened whinny, among several other forms of exciting feedback. Although this robopony won't actually trot around the neighborhood like the real one your parents would buy you if they weren't so stingy, you can still sit on its back (assuming you're under 80 pounds) and "feed" it a plastic carrot over and over again. All-in-all, the Dream Pony doesn't really seem to provide the kind of long-term playability you'd get from an Xbox or a Robosapien, but once your little girl starts begging and whining for one, you'll have little choice but to welcome Dreamy into your home.





