Hasta La Gadget!

This house in the San Juan Islands of Washington hides itself in nature and reveals its transformer abilities depending on the day. There are floor to ceiling glass walls that can be exposed. Or can be made to be completely open. There is an extendable deck. There is a bathroom roof that can be raised away. Hell, even the interior walls can be re-arranged. It’s a house that can change its personality according to nature. More »

Oh, the wondrous experience that is Toy Fair. And that particular experience, as you may know, includes anything from NERF hoop games and foam fusillades, to boxing robots and itty-bitty, tinkering novelties. To make things even better, though, Hasbro was kind enough to invite us over to its 2013 showcase in NYC, where the prodigious toy maker was exhibiting some Furby amigos known as Party Rockers, Iron Man’s Sonic Blasting figurine and Arc Fx Mission life-sized mask, a Sesame Street play-and-learning system for toddlers, as well as a Transformers Rescue Bots Beam Box which enhances the experience by allowing the toys to mesh into a game that can be played on a TV set. There was also a little Star Wars and Star Trek action, of course — and the good news is you, too, can see it all, just head past the break to take a look at the vast gallery and a quick video showing off a few of Hasbro’s new toys.

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Source: Hasbro

All these modern-day kids have iPad and iPod touch apps to learn the alphabet. My kindergarten class had a box of these Alphabet Robots for our grimey, snot-ridden hands to play with. With just one or two minor adjustments, a letter of the alphabet suddenly transformed into an adorable little robot creature. This was awesome. It made learning fun. More »

Sure, CES isn’t all fun and games, but, well, sometimes it’s exactly that. Like when Stern Pinball CEO Gary Stern pays a visit to our CES stage and brings along his company’s latest, the Transformers Pin. This isn’t just any old pinball machine — it’s a home unit, aimed at the large portion of the pinball-buying audience looking to bring silver ball to their humble abodes, available though outlets like Amazon with a price tag well under those of the company’s pro units.

It’s also noticeably smaller than those machines — in fact, if you give it a bit of the old body English during play, you can actually scoot the machine a bit. The back glass is also not quite as grand as those on its professional siblings, but it’s still got a working display for scrolls and the requisite text crawl. The playfield, meanwhile, is pretty close to the real deal. Stern’s clearly expert in making flippers, bumpers and the like, and many of those components went into the making of this machine.

Continue reading Stern Pinball’s Transformers Pin home game hands-on (video)

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The idea of transformers is cool even when they just turn from one thing to another, so how much cooler would they be if they could form into anything? That’s the goal MIT aims to achieve with their tiny reconfigurable chain links that could be the Swiss Army knife of robotics. More »