Brian Says:

One of the greatest surprises for me when we visited the American International Toy Fair this year was when we came across a show room for WowWee toys. As I mentioned earlier, we were wandering around the toy buildings, on our way to try and bust down Toy Biz's door. Right before the bridge to the next building over, we saw a booth which looked to belong to Hasbro. Having not seen any Star Wars crap at the show yet, Collin and I were very interested in possibly seeing said Star Wars crap in this very show room. However, we were instead greeted by a large possibly Australian man wearing a hat, who showed us things which had nothing to do with Star Wars.

Little did we know that this possibly Australian, possibly New Zealandish, hat-wearing man was none other than Mark W. Tilden, the founder of the BEAM theories of robotics. Something to that effect. During the tour he gave us, he frequently made reference to his work for NASA. He essentially revealed that he helped design, or designed in full, I can't remember, the Mars rover thingie. And he also mentioned that he moved into developing for WowWee, mainly because he didn't want to work for years with a multi-billion dollar budget, only to have them crash it on Mars, whereas in toys, he works for months with a much smaller budget. And if the company screws it up, the time you wasted is much less.

That's right. The guy who developed the Mars Rover-bot is now making toys. Toys that we can BUY. That is freaking cool!

So he started giving us the grand tour. I'll go through each product he showed us, and relate as much as I can remember about it to y'all. Ready to begin? Great! Let the WowWee tour commence!!

First, Mr. Tilden showed us the Power Air Surfer. You guys know all about remote control air planes and such? I know whenever I saw them, they looked really cool, and at the same time, an incredible pain in the ass to play with. The control is all complicated, and most of the time, you end up crashing the bastard right into the ground. Well, bastard-crash no more, with the Power Air Surfer and its big brother, the Sky Wolf. These are both incredibly durable, not to mention inexpensive, RC air planes. I'm not completely positive on the propulsion method employed by the Power Air Surfer...wish I'd taken notes. But I am quite positive that the Sky Wolf has these crazy-powerful propellers in the back. When Tilden switched them on, my hair flew straight back. It was POWERFUL. Since we were in a showroom setting, they couldn't really show off these planes in person, but they did have a video, and what I saw was quite cool. The Power Air Surfer costs around $30, and the Sky Wolf $50. Of course, these are only faint memories of a couple of weeks ago, so I can't be sure as to their veracity. But I'm almost positive that's what I was told. Anyway, check out the pics. And look for these suckers in the stores. I'm also not sure when they're coming out, or if they even are out, but I know when I see them, I'm gonna buy'em! I need something to make life fun when I'm outside, and stupid nature just isn't doing it.

Next, we were shown WowWee's various attempts at hovercraft toys. Now, I had an RC hovercraft when I was a kid. It had this rubber/plastic/elastic type bubble thing on the bottom, which, when turned on, was supposed to allow it to glide across the room gracefully. Naturally, the thing only ever half inflated, and just sorta whined loudly whenever it was turned on. Hovercrafts and I don't get along well.

I guess hovercraft technology in toys has come a long way in the last eight years or so, because the devices we were shown worked extremely smoothly. First he showed us their first attempt at RC hovercrafts. It was this guy right here:

This guy was FAST. It was a really cool toy, but the control was really off, and Tilden pointed this out as he demonstrated. It was largely due to the impreciseness inherent when working with any kind of hover technology. You'd enter a command for the thing to turn, and it would, but because of inertia, friction, and all those other sciency-type words, the craft would simply change the direction it was facing and mainly continue along the path it was on and slam into a wall or something. The change in direction took too long to take effect. This was also largely due to those giant fans you see on the back of the thing. So, in their next hover-vehicle, they revised the design a bit. Check it out:

As you can see, they moved the fans to a downward position, which really made a tremendous difference in the handling and control of the thing. This hovercraft actually WORKED, something I'd never seen effectively before. The fact that they could make this pain-in-the-ass bit of technology functional on this tiny scale speaks volumes for the ingenuity and intelligence which is going on in this company. The best part about this nifty little thing? It supports five inch action figures. It's going to be marketed, I believe, for G.I. Joes, but you could probably slap a Star Wars figure on there if you want. Hell, maybe even a DC Pocket hero. And it's got functional missile launchers. Now, you can't fire via the remote, which is kinda sucky, but they still managed to squeeze a very cool feature into the mechanism. What they did instead, is set the missile launchers on a delay, so you can push the button, and you've got about 5 seconds or so to get your craft into position to shoot the bad guys. I'm not entirely sure on the time lag, but I know that it's there. Very ingenious, if you ask me. The implications for playability are pretty cool, if you think about it. Picture it: You and your buddy each have these hovercrafts with your respective Joes manning the controls. You set the missiles for firing, and you go nuts, trying to "explode" the other. At the very least, it could be fun in an office setting. Like, you could send your hovercraft down the hall and have it fire a missile at your co-worker five cubicles away. I don't doubt that I'll be picking this baby up when I see it. Not too sure on price or release, but WowWee's website will probably have some more info, if not now, then later on.

Now, to bridge the gap between RC Vehicles and water play, is the Manta Ray toy. this is basically your standard RC car or boat, but completely submergible. From what Tilden told us, it navigates a lot like the hovercraft, only underwater. It comes with lots of different objects you can retrieve from the bottom of the pool with it, a la Jacques Cousto (sp?). Also very cool looking. If only I had a pool...

Now to another really cool looking toy. This thing left a really huge impression on me, as it is one of the coolest water guns I've ever seen. For this product, known as the Max Cyclone, Tilden did his best Gary Oldman impression from "The Fifth Element." Remember those guns that Oldman's character sold to all of those green orc guys, the ones that eventually blew up on them when they hit the red button? That gun served as the inspiration for this water gun. First, check out the pictures:

So, there're three nozzle settings, for different kinds of shots, three different fire settings, pumps and all kinds of other crap are LOADED into this gun. This is the ultimate water weapon. What's cool, is if you get captured or something, and an enemy guy takes your gun, you can set it to one of the settings to make it so that when he uses it, it only fires backwards, getting him wet (a la "Fifth Element"). Also, I'm pretty sure that red button down there can be pushed for a time-delay fire, so you can push that, leave the gun set down for a while, and it'll squirt an unsuspecting passerby. I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of other features I just can't recall at the moment, but on the whole, this gun is really cool. I really hate the fact that I'm too old to run around East Birchwood with my friends using water guns, engaging in all-out water wars and such, now that this gun is on the market (or will be; again, not sure of the release info). I know when I see it, I'll probably grab it. In addition to this gun, there were two other water deployment devices WowWee showed us, one of which I managed to snag a picture of. It's basically this little plastic rock with a water canon hidden inside it, which can be activated via remote control. The control can slip over your wrist for easy use. The same goes for a little tank-type doohickey of similar design. I'd say more about it, but I didn't get a picture of it, so my mind has decided not to remember so much about it. Ah, well. Anyway, all three of these devices, used in tandem, were designed to make you a living water weapon. I can't imagine a kid who wouldn't love getting all this stuff in the summer, and setting traps for his friends around his porch. God, I miss my childhood. Alas, those days are gone...here's the rock thing:

Next up is what seems to be what will be WowWee's flagship toy: The RoboSapien. This is where Tilden's experience with robotics came heavily into play. He commented that he's probably the only person who ever bought Sony's thousand dollar robo-dog, Aibo, for the strict purpose of dissecting the little sucker and seeing how it worked. When he showed us the RoboSapien, he also compared it to Honda's robot, Asimo. Essentially, his team's goal was to find a better way to get a robot into an affordable, toy form. Enter RoboSapien. Check out these pics:

Now, I did have a picture of the little guy in motion, but he moved so fast, it was blurry as hell, so that went into the garbage. But basically, as the name implies, this is a robot that walks, and acts, like a big gorilla. He comes with a remote control with various different action buttons, and you can also program him to act out a sequence of commands. Tilden mentioned that his movement was based on something to do with a pendulum...scientist I am not. He was very enthusiastic about this guy, and with good reason it seems. There's actually a documentary in the works about him, which should air on various science channels in the coming months, starring John Cleese as the voice of RoboSapien here. I'm pretty excited to see it. The RoboSapien should retail for somewhere around $70 or $80 I believe, but, again, I'm quoting from memory. Dammit, I should go to these things with a pencil and paper! Stupid, crappy reporter Brian! Anyhow, this is basically your Furby for the 21st century, but without all that stupid language learning crap. RoboSimian is a monkey; he speaks ape. You understand him because he communicates via the universal language of body gestures and different kinds of grunts and growls. This was also a decision based on the problems involved with translating a toy's soundtrack for international markets. RoboSimian has no such problems. What Tilden emphasized with the RoboSimian, was the customization possibilities involved. Are you listening, action figure customizing freaks? Now you can dress up and paint your very own robot. He also said that because of its affordability, techno-geeks (I'm looking at you, Dave) can open this sucker up and play around with his insides, looking to see not only how he works, but what can be done to him. Wise move.

While a little pricey for me, being a lowly, struggling writer and all, the RoboSimian is still extremely appealing. I know that if it's advertised right, every kid will want one of these under their respective holiday bits of foliage, candelabras, or loaves of bread and whatnot. This can be the new "Tickle Me Elmo" if Hasbro does their job. Maybe the term will be "Tickle Me RoboSimian." I can see it now, the little monkey-bot awkwardly poking and prodding you with his little plastic fingers, trying to incite laughter. "Tickle me, RoboSimian!" you'll cry. But alas. The RoboSimian was not built for love. In fact, I think that would be illegal.

Moving on, we were next shown WowWee's stab at Lego Mindstorms style toy sets. He reminded us first of how cool those huge, hulking boxes full of robot parts from Mindstorms was. Then he reminded us of how damned expensive they were. Solution? Constructo-Botix! Here you have inexpensive robotics sets, operated by a connected remote, that anyone can have fun with. What was cool about these was the fact that all the parts were completely interchangeable, sort of like Micronauts, but with motors and remotes and such. Again, one of the goals here is to provide an affordable way for people, be you kid, adult, or just plan nerdy geek, to become a robot builder, and pretend to be a mad scientist type person. These sets were to be priced at about $30 to $40, if memory serves correctly. Enjoy the pics:

After this point, most of the REALLY cool stuff was shown. The rest was the lower end product, the stuff that has been out already and is more run of the mill, which is fine. They just didn't really showcase the ingenuity of this company, that's all. Anyway, next up are the Flash Racers, which are basically smaller RC cars which run on AA batteries instead of those darn packs you have to recharge for something like 8 hours for 15 minutes of play. And the RC functionality is really good, too. It's not one of those, push a button and it goes backwards while turning, let go and it goes straight RC cars. Those things suck. These are fully functional RC's, and for the battery thing alone, they should be applauded. Oh, and they've got crazy-funky lights all over them, if you want them to. Hence the "Flash" in the name. Check'em out:

[Collin watches closely as Professor Tilden tries calming down an approaching, bloodthirsty Bengal tiger. Note: Bengal tiger not pictured.]

Following are pictures of some more various toys. Like above, click'em to see'em all big and stuff.

[This bug was friggin' fast! That's why he's out of frame in the second pic. In the third, he's been programmed to pounce...frightening...]

[Above is a creepy robo-horse. See those bulges? Those are its robo-insides. Tilden commented that there was a lot more success with robo-toys which didn't pretend to be alive. Here's the proof.]

[On the left, Doctor Tilden enjoying AllNerdReview's company. On the right, Doctor Tilden after I conk him on the head with RoboSimian, and then steal his wallet.]

To sum up, WowWee looks to be one of my favorite unexpected surprises from Toy Fair. I never imagined I could get this excited about non-action figure toys. And believe me, this stuff is really, really cool. Incredible thanks to Mark Tilden for showing us around, even though we were new to the fair. He seemed to really groove on our being Nerd Ambassadors, as stated on our business cards. These guys look like they're gonna really put out some amazing stuff. Look for that wacky WowWee symbol when you're perusing Hasbro products next time you head to the toy store. And if you find it, my recommendation to you is to buy it. These guys look like they're gonna be pretty influential in the coming months and years. Watch'em! Here's to a bright, fun future from WowWee!

If you haven't yet, check out www.wowwee.com for more info! Go now, sucka!