If you have ever wondered how LEGO bricks are made, they are made using injection molds like this one seen here. This one produced one hundred and twenty million bricks before it was retired. Think about it. This LEGO mold probably made some of the bricks that you played with as a kid(Or an adult), which gave you hours of joy. I think it has earned a nice retirement that has nothing to do with making bricks. I say let it relax in a LEGO hut on an island somewhere. A hut that is made by bricks made by other molds.
I’m sure geeks would pay a lot of money for this piece of LEGO history.
One of the buried treasures at last week’s New York Toy Fair was this cool buggy I found hiding out in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles booth. Basically, it’s like a mega buggy that can seat all four Ninja Turtles, but can also break off into individual cars.
The Patrol Buggy line comes in individual rides for Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo, and then they can snap together to form the giant four-turtle mega buggy shown above.
You can also connect two of the vehicles together and launch either Leo and his rocket grenade, or Raph and his road rash missile towards their foes.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles patrol buggies will sell for $19.99(USD) each when they arrive this August, and are compatible with standard TMNT action figures (each sold separately.)
There are hundreds of tabletop games, board games and card games, and with them come even more tokens and other game pieces, some of which you’ll almost surely lose over the years. This neat little invention by Rodney Benesh lets you replace your lost game tokens and personalize your gaming experience as well.
There’s nothing fancy about the Doppelganger. It’s just two one inch LCD screens positioned back to back and resting on a one sq.in. base. Connect the Doppelganger to a computer via USB to transfer up to 30 images; a button on the Doppelganger’s base lets you flip through the pictures. The current prototype’s battery lasts up to 4 hours, but Rodney hope to increase that to 8 hours in later models.
Pledge at least $20 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve your own Doppelganger. The Doppelganger may be a simple device, but as the video above shows, its functionality is limited only by your imagination. I’m guessing people who love playing role-playing games won’t have a problem with that.
Get your X-Wing pilot suit on and ready your Astromech droid. LEGO fans who are itching for a new Star Wars set will be happy to learn that a new X-Wing starfighter set will be coming out this May.
The set is 10240 – the Red Five X-Wing Starfighter. It will be available for $200(USD). Sure that’s expensive, but your childhood memories are priceless right? For that price you get 1,558 LEGO pieces, and one R2 unit.
The X-Wing offers tons of detail, including smoothly-moving wings, accurate laser cannons, a see-through cockpit with a hinged canopy, and even a little place for R2-D2 to hang out.
Check out the video below and the Flickr gallery for all of the details if you want to drool, and then start counting your money.
Then go put that money in a safe place and wait and say, “Red Five, Standing by (until May!)”
Drones have often been used in war theaters, but that doesn’t stop this little military drone from being pretty cute. It was deployed by the British Army in Afghanistan and it measures only four inches by two inches.
The PD-100 Black Hornet Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand, and comes with a tiny camera that will allow soldiers to use it to surveil what happens on the ground before entering hostile areas.
It’s small enough that it can even peek around corners before turning. The drone has an autonomy of up to 30 minutes at a time, and has a range of about half a mile. Here’s some video of an earlier prototype of the PD-100 in action:
The rogue-like space sim FTL: Faster Than Light is a game that may not have existed if not for Kickstarter and the backers that funded its developer Subset Games. How appropriate – and perilous – is it that the fate of its merchandise should also be decided by the support of the masses?
The FTL: Faster Than Light LEGO set was conceptualized by Crashsanders and GlenBricker. It started when Crashsanders built a LEGO version of the starter ship Kestrel and posted it on the FTL forums. It was received warmly and not shot down by Rebels, so Crashsanders put together a proposal on LEGO Cuusoo. Aside from the Kestrel, his proposal includes the Engi Stealth Cruiser, the Mantis Cruiser as well as minifigs of the game’s races. It seems like he’ll design more ships as more people vote for the proposal.
I know that the game absolutely hates our guts and always wants us to fail, but come on, admit it: you love it anyway. So vote for it on LEGO Cuusoo! Otherwise I’ll board your house and set fire to your Oxygen systems. Subset Games itself supports the proposal. Although instead of supporting proposals I wish they’d spend their time porting FTL to tablets. Come on guys, you’re guaranteed make millions. Or at least $9.99.
Check out these new plush Direwolves. They are from a new line of Game of Thrones toys from Factory Entertainment. Aside from Direwolves, they will be offering plush dragon eggs, dragons and shield-shaped throw pillows as well as some prop replicas and sculptural miniatures. The plush Direwolves are the best though. They are soft and cuddly and not dangerous at all. Ghost has red eyes. But as much as I like these soft Direwolves, I can’t help but want some plush White Walkers. That would be awesome. These wolves are pretty cool though. I would cuddle one if I were a Stark.
They were spotted at the recent New York Toy Fair, and should be available this Summer.
There was some uproar about the possibility of using unarmed drones over US soil to locate that cop turned killer fugitive, but maybe that’s because drones have a bad rap because of all of the bombs they’ve been known to drop. Now, engineers at FliteTest are trying to make a kinder, gentler drone, the kind that captures artsy images.
The Lomo-Copter is a remote-controlled tricopter, outfitted with a medium-format Diana F+ Lomography camera with an instant back and remote-triggering mechanism. This brings fuzzy, light-leaky, and vignette stylized imagery to secret spy footage.
The Lomo-Copter also has another camera mounted to the Lomo-cam’s viewfinder, which transmits real-time footage to the operator’s stylish goggles for first-person-view operation of the drone, so they can snap pictures remotely with the old-school analog camera. Here’s a comparison of the FPV goggles and a Lomo print:
So if you’re worried about drones flying over your neighborhood, don’t be because some of them are actually pretty nice, and they might just Instagram you some photos of your garden gnomes.
I’m sure that chess has dozens – if not hundreds – of virtual versions that let people play against each other online. This project by YouTuber FunGowRightNow12 and his fellow students at Northeastern University also offers online multiplayer, but it’s not a videogame. It uses a couple of physical boards along with chess pieces that move on their own.
FunGowRightNow12 and his group-mates made the wireless chess boards for their senior project back in April 2012. The end result of the project is nothing short of magical: you move your chess piece, and the corresponding piece on your opponent’s board does the exact same move and vice versa. It even takes captured pieces out of the board for you. Since the commands are transferred via the Internet, you and your opponents could be anywhere across the globe and you’ll still be able to play with the pieces.
Sadly, FunGowRightNow12 didn’t go into details about the intricacies of their project aside from what he and his group-mates shared on Reddit, but they did post a couple of additional videos. This one shows what’s inside the board:
It looks like there’s a robotic X/Y arm with a retractable magnet on it for moving the pieces around, which is similar to how those Phantom Force computerized chess sets work. The big difference here is that you can play with another human on the other side of the world using this system.
The video below shows how the system handles less straightforward maneuvers such as castling and rescinding illegal moves. In the case of the latter, FunGowRightNow12 and his pals hooked up a computer with a program that determines what the valid moves are at the start of every turn. If it detects an illegal move, the turn will be suspended until the player makes a correct move. Only then will the turn be sent to the other board.
One of the cooler toys to rear its head at the 2013 New York Toy Fair was this gigantic new Transformer, which stands a whopping 24-inches-tall.
This bad boy is based on the Titan-class Metroplex, and can transform into two different configurations – a giant wheeled battle platform with helipad, and the Scramble City battle station.
It’s loaded with cool features, including eyes that light up, a projectile launcher, sound and voice effects, and even articulating pupils in its eyes. I also love how his head converts into a turret.
Hasbro expects to launch this gigantic Transformer this Fall as part of the 30 year anniversary of the franchise, and it will retail for$125(USD). So kids, start saving your pennies now.
Funny thing is, while 2-feet-tall is the tallest official Transformers toy released, the actual Metroplex is estimated to be as much as 800-meters-tall (about the same height as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai) – if he actually existed, that is.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
