Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: Toys and Neat Stuff
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today's bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.
Technically, you can toy with just about anything, so the items that follow aren't necessarily the ones you'll find on the shelves of your average toy store, though there's certainly a few of those too -- mostly, they're items that we thought were simply too awesome to escape your notice this year, but didn't make it into our standard categories. Read on!
Stocking stuffers
Nerf redefined cubicle warfare this year with a series of belt, clip and drum-fed guns, but the Nerf Barricade is the one you really want -- it's a comparatively compact electric revolver that uses a pair of high-speed wheels to kick out ten semi-automatic Nerf darts. No need to pump or cock this foam-firing pistol, so your giftee can even go akimbo on co-workers with one in each paw. Brand new, you may have to trek to a physical store to find one right now, but it should be shipping shortly wherever toys are sold. |
|
|
Joby Gorillatorch Switchback / Blade - $60
|
|
Oh, you shouldn't have
There are any number of reasons to invest in a Parrot AR.Drone on behalf of that special someone. Perhaps they've a budding interest in augmented reality gaming, or perhaps they need to scare the bejeezus out of a late night TV host. Maybe they just want to casually fly the remote control auto-stabilizing four-propeller aircraft from the comfort of their touchscreen smartphone. But the best reason to purchase an AR.Drone is to convince your significant other to let you buy one for yourself. You'll need two, after all. |
|
|
We can't afford the rent now, can we?
Buying toys is all well and good, but why not build them yourself? MakerBot's got everything you need to build a miniature computer numerical controlled (CNC) 3D printer that extrudes little dots of ABS plastic goop to form whatever shapes you'd like -- even another MakerBot, if you choose -- and comes with its own conveyor belt to automatically print object after object in a row. Connect over USB to a computer (or pop in an SD card) with a ready design, and it'll keep printing till it runs out of plastic filament. Truly, the gift that keeps on giving. Sadly, you'll have to print out an IOU for this one -- it ships after seven weeks of lead time. |
| Gibson Firebird X robot guitar - $5,570
|