What Toys Are in Store After Robosapien?
The belching, grunting, knee-high Robosapien is the must-have toy this Christmas. Figures released this week put worldwide sales of the £80 robot at 2m in the six months since its launch.
But the cutting edge toy, which can perform 67 different manoeuvres and responds to its environment, will quickly be surpassed by new ones in the pipeline. Mike Hawley, an expert in toy technology at MIT, says companies are investing heavily in making toys capable of more complex and smoother movements. “All that mechanical knowhow has fallen into place and there are plenty of companies building them now,” he says.
Unlike Robosapien, in five years’ time, toys will commonly have built-in wireless web connections, so they can download information and be controlled via the net. Falling microchip costs will mean that even cheap toys will pack hefty processing power. “You’ll have toys that are very smart,” says Hawley. “Your robot pet dog will actually pick up scraps around the table the way it should.”
Chris Byrne, an independent New York-based toy consultant who claims to have played with toys every day for the past 25 years, says the next generation will engage children in ever more unconventional ways.
“The first thing some children say when they see the Robosapien is ‘If I can open it up, I can hack it,’” he says. Hacking - tapping into the toy’s circuitboard to get it to do something it wasn’t programmed to do - became popular when toy Furbies hit the market several years ago, but more advanced toys such as the Robosapien actively encourage owners to experiment. “You’re going to see the ability to hack toys become more of a feature,” says Byrne.
Competitions have already been launched to find who can do the most outrageous hack on a Robosapien. “This is just another form of play, it’s encouraging children to think in a different way,” adds Byrne.
Byrne says miniature cameras are also likely to start appearing in toys soon, along with small video displays. “There are people out there who say children should only play with crayons and wooden blocks,” says Byrne. “But toys always reflect culture and these will prepare children for the society they’ll grow up in.”
Copyright 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Copyright © 2002 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
