Hasta La Gadget!

ThinkGeek is blackmailing kindhearted people with its blobfish plush. What’s a blobfish? This poor creature was voted the world’s ugliest animal. To make things even more insulting, blobfish are endangered animals and don’t look hideous when in their natural habitat, thousands of feet underwater. That’s like having an alien take the last human to outer space stark naked, then noting that we look like bloated and sunburned corpses.

On the other hand, the voting was conducted by an organization called the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, which raises awareness for unsightly endangered animals. Many people know about pandas, eagles and tigers, but they’re not the only dying animals. With its title, the blobfish now serves as the mascot of its ilk.

Wipe your browser’s tears and order the blobfish plush from ThinkGeek for $40 (USD).

[via Boing Boing]

Talking toys are nothing new, but most toys simply spout off pre-recorded sound bites. Not Supertoy Teddy. He’s a teddy bear that can actually hold a conversation, i.e. it will listen to what you say and respond accordingly. It’s like Siri, but in a stuffed toy.

Supertoy Robotics, the company behind Teddy, also made Jeannie, a voice-activated virtual assistant app for Android. In other words, these guys know a thing or two about natural language user interfaces.

I’m not sure if the toy in the video was actually working or if that exchange was staged. What I do know is that the Supertoy Teddy will work like Siri and Jeannie. And it sounds a whole lot like Ted. When you speak to it, it will connect to several servers that will decipher what you said and send back an appropriate reply. It will supposedly understand 30 languages out of the box. How will it do all of that? According to Supertoy Robotics’ response to backers, you’ll need to place a mobile device inside Teddy to make him work. The device will run Teddy’s app and will be the one to connect to the servers.

The video below, which shows Teddy’s innards, should give us a better idea of how the toy will perform in real life:

Hopefully Supertoy Robotics will give a no-frills demo of the final toy to clear up any confusion and show people what it can really do. But if you’re already sold, pledge about $64 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Supertoy Teddy as a reward. I wonder if Teddy knows the Thunder Buddy Song.

deviantART member Callykarishokka makes very cute stuffed toys that she calls puggles. I’m not sure if she came up with the name herself or if this is a type of stuffed toy, but the name certainly fits the appearance of the toys. Most of the puggles belong in what she calls Puggleformers: adorable versions of Transformers.

The Autobot logo alone is killing me with cuteness. Cally has also made puggle versions of other geeky characters for her customers.

Sadly, Cally isn’t accepting commissions as of this writing. For now we’ll have to be content with ogling her puggles. Check out Cally’s deviantART page for more pictures.

[via CtMU via Neatorama]