Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve already brought you a few clips of Kenji Ishida’s amazing self-transforming RC cars, but so far he’s only made about ten of them available to the public, at a staggering $24,000 a piece. But there’s great news for those of us who’ve chosen to pay off our mortgages instead of buying a toy robot: Takara Tomy is apparently working with Kenji and Brave Robotics to mass produce these as what will probably be the greatest toy ever.

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Popular smart phone messaging app LINE created by Naver Japan has collaborated with major Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy to create a range of merchandise aimed at children based on a new animated series called LINE Town.

The LINE Town series has begun broadcasting in Japan on TV Tokyo (Thursdays from 6.30-7pm) and is based on characters from LINE’s stickers which are more sophisticated than emoticons, featuring a larger spectrum of personas, humour and darkness.

It is easy to understand the massive popularity of LINE in Japan, just from observing people using the app on crowded subway trains and especially when most young people will ask for my LINE id instead of Facebook when exchanging contacts. According to ZDNet Asia worldwide LINE users now exceed 150 million.

LINE TOWN, the animated series. Image via Lineblog

LINE’s popularity coupled with Japan’s preference for cute and distinct characters is probably what spurred the creation of the animated series and spin off products which includes the MY TOUCH phone, a LINE sticker printing kit, several customised LINE stamp kits and toy figures (pictured bellow).

Images via watch.impress

LINE Town My Touch is designed so that children who are not ‘lucky’ enough to have smartphones can still enjoy the simulated experience of using them. The most unique aspect of My Touch for children is the application of NFC technology to exchange LINE stickers and messages by ‘touching’ the phones together (as pictured bellow).

To further replicate the experience of using a real smartphone, My Touch is equipped with colour LCD screens and sliding touch functions that children use to navigate through the menu of LINE Town mini-games and activities that allows them to unlock more characters and stickers. My Touch is scheduled for released on August 8, 2012 at 6,825 yen (US$70) which is quite steep considering it is a fake phone for children.

This strategy by LINE and Takara Tomy to entice children into the habit of using smart phones to communicate with friends at an early age could produce more smartphone dependant young people and create a strong affiliation between LINE and mobile communication.

Image via coolsmartphone

On the one hand maybe it is good to have more children confident with using the latest in mobile technology so that they are quicker to adapt to changing communication trends in the future. On the other hand should children really be playing and chatting to each other with fake smartphones? Wouldn’t it be better if they just talked to each other instead? Especially if they are only a few feet away.

“Hietama-chan” by Takara Tomy Arts is not just a colorful egg. They are 3 brothers and 3 sisters supporting you to save energy from inside of your refrigerator.
When you open your fridge, Hietama-chan starts telling you “You’re wasting of energy!” or “Please close the door soon!” Some people, especially kids and husbands, need these reminders to be quick when the refrigerator door is open!
If multiple egg brothers and sisters get together, they sing …

We all hate using a smartphone or tablet when the screen’s covered in greasy fingerprints. But it’s a situation that’s easy to solve with nothing but a shirt sleeve, or if you’re particularly anal, a microfiber cloth. What the world doesn’t need is a tiny Roomba-like cleaning device designed specifically for cleaning fingerprints, but apparently Takara Tomy didn’t get that memo. More »

When Battroborg hit shelves in Japan last June we were, admittedly, a tad jealous. Where were our tiny, motion controlled boxing bots? Well, if you can be just a bit more patient, the vicious little toys should be landing stateside in time for Christmas. Tomy was nice enough to bring them by our office for a little preview and to help us work out some intra-office tension. So, beyond the obvious Wii and Rock’em Sock’em Robots comparisons, what’s it like piloting these puny pugilists through battle? Head on after the break for impressions, pics and a dose of combat — Engadget style.

When Tomy rep, Jamie Kieffer, took out the Battroborgs we were immediately struck by how small they were. Maybe previous coverage didn’t give us proper perspective, but at about two or three inches tall, they’re damn-near pocketable, which was a tad unexpected. In fact, if we think they were a precursor to our Real Steel fantasies coming true, we’d say they were cute. Their exceptionally light plastic bodies have two arms with joints at the elbow and shoulder, which allow them to throw straight rights and jabs. We also discovered, accidentally, that if you pop the elbow joint out of place you can “teach” the little guys to throw a hook. The controller bears obvious similarities to the Wii controller and Nunchuk. Two white plastic parts are connected by a thin cord with the larger half housing four AA batteries and an on off switch. Both pieces house accelerometers that translate your furious flurries into robot rights and lefts.

Operation is pretty simple. A small connector on the front of the controller lets you dock a robot and charge it for up to 20 minutes of continuous combat. When its time to do battle you flick a tiny switch on the back of your Battroborg then turn on the controller (in that order, please) to pair the two using 2.4GHz wireless. Communication between the two is instantaneous and, even with four slugging it out simultaneously, there seemed to be no interference from the devices. In fact, TOMY claims you can have up to 20 of them slug it out simultaneously. While the punching controls are pretty self explanatory, moving about takes some adjustment. Since a single motor drives the whole bot, moving forward is accomplished through throwing a series of alternating punches. (Throwing one punch over and over will spin you in a circle.)

Battroborgs should be hitting American retailers in time Christmas, with two bots and an arena expected to cost between $70 and $80. While additional combatants can be purchased separately for around $30.

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.

Filed under: Robots

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