Gundam Christmas Tree
A Christmas tree decorated with over 60 Gundam plastic models was set up in Akihabara to promote the new Gundam game for the Sony PSP. From robot journalist Moriyama-san's new blog NODE.
5 posts categorized "Toys"
December 04, 2009
May 21, 2009
Speecys and Sega Toys to come out with new communication robot
The founder and CEO of Speecys, Tomoaki Kasuga, was in Silicon Valley to give a presentation at TiEcon 2009. He is seeking 10 million dollars in funding to expand his business of developing and selling communication robots.
During his stay in California, he made public that his company has teamed up with toy maker Sega Toys to jointly commercialize a new robot by the beginning of 2010. It is not clear at this point whether the new robot will be a humanoid or not. But what is clear is that it will have the capability to hook up with the network to download all sorts of information using voice command. Speecys has come up with a system to enable that - watch the video below.
In the future, Speecy's cloud computing system will allow advertisers to send personalised ads to the robot users. "Think of it as a new friendly IT device. Friendlier than the PC." says Kasuga-san. The new robot is targeted to be in the 200-500 dollar price range.
Speecys had been working on the NNR-1, but according to Kasuga-san, they are now focusing on the project with Sega.
Below is a photo of Kasuga-san doing a demo at Tiecon.
February 03, 2009
Cell phone toy robots - $6.99 each
Takara Tomy just announced a Mickey Mouse Transformer toy, but here is another cool toy from Tokyo but cheaper. I found these at our local Japanese supermarket for $6.99 each.
I was surprised that the two-legged robots can actually stand. They will turn into cell phones as below.
They are characters from a Japanese TV program called Keitai Sosakan 7 (or Cell Phone Agent 7) and sold by Bandai. It comes with a tiny piece of gum as you can see below. According to my friend who used to work at Bandai, this is a magnificent tactic they came up with a few years ago so that they - a toy maker - can legally put their products on (read "invade") the candy shelves.
The instructions are in Japanese but even if you don't read the language it is simple enough to figure out and enjoy.
October 09, 2007
New robot dog from Sega Toys
Sega Toys announced a new robot toy called MIO. I would say that the concept is similar to the Tamagotchi but in a more idog form. The new MIO can show 17 different kinds of emotions by the shape of its pupil which can change into more than 100 variations. A bone-shaped pupil means that it is hungry and if you feed him the bone (which comes as an accessory) he will become happy or love you etc. You can pet it to make it happy and when happy it can start walking too.
MIO is specifically targeted toward "elementary school age girls." Price is 9,240 yen including tax - about $80 - and Sega Toys aims to sell 100,000 of these per year.
April 20, 2007
Transformers
Toy maker TAKARATOMY Co. and NIKE have teamed up and come out with a toy sneaker that transforms into a robot. I couldn't find an English press release for this TRANSFORMERS SPORTS LABEL series but you can see a photo on the Japanese press release. The movie is supposed to come out this summer.
