The new Furby?
Categories: Media, Toys & Games, Gadgets & Tech
Remember the Tickle Me Elmo craze of 1996? That giggling red monster was at the top of children's Christmas lists everywhere. Toy stores couldn't keep Elmo in stock and this led to fist fights and injured Wal-Mart workers as parents desperately tried to snatch one up for Christmas.
A few years later, there was Furby. Created by Caleb Chung, that hairy little monster quickly sold out in stores during the holiday season of 1998, leading some to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase the $40 toy for their kids.
Now, Chung is hoping to repeat the success of Furby with his newest creation: Pleo, the robotic dinosaur. Scheduled to hit stores sometime this summer, Pleo is Furby on steroids. With 14 motors and sixteen processors, a nose-mounted camera and 30 sensors, this dino can avoid obstacles and is sensitive to touch, noise and even other Pleo's. According to Chung, Pleo is so complex that it will "take years for each individual dino to come into its own."
At $300 bucks each, Pleo is way more expensive than Furby, but quite a bit less than a similar robotic toy -- Sony's $2000 failed robot dog, Aibo. So, what do you think? Does this toy sound cool enough to warrant the steep price? Will it be worth fighting over come Christmas?
A few years later, there was Furby. Created by Caleb Chung, that hairy little monster quickly sold out in stores during the holiday season of 1998, leading some to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase the $40 toy for their kids.
Now, Chung is hoping to repeat the success of Furby with his newest creation: Pleo, the robotic dinosaur. Scheduled to hit stores sometime this summer, Pleo is Furby on steroids. With 14 motors and sixteen processors, a nose-mounted camera and 30 sensors, this dino can avoid obstacles and is sensitive to touch, noise and even other Pleo's. According to Chung, Pleo is so complex that it will "take years for each individual dino to come into its own."
At $300 bucks each, Pleo is way more expensive than Furby, but quite a bit less than a similar robotic toy -- Sony's $2000 failed robot dog, Aibo. So, what do you think? Does this toy sound cool enough to warrant the steep price? Will it be worth fighting over come Christmas?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matthew Miller 6-15-2007 @ 2:35PM
This is certainly exactly the kind of thing I dreamed of as a little boy -- but now, as a cynical adult, I'm pretty sure this can never live up to what a kid really needs in a toy. A robot with so many features ends up being limited by those features; whereas an old-fashioned inanimate stuffed dinosaur can do *anything*.
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