Hasta La Gadget!

Swinxs was one of the more interesting interactive gaming concepts that I saw on the floor of this year’s Toy Fair. The device is a little green plastic box that serves as a play hub for kids. It supports up to ten players at a time–though it also features a single-player mode. The kids wear elastic bands around their wrists with RFID chips that respond to the base.

Swinxs has ten games built in, including tag, musical chairs, and hide-and-seek. You can also download extra games, music, and quizzes from the Swinxs’ Web site, via the bult-in USB port, and Swinxs.com offers options for creating new games. At the moment, the company is still seeking a U.S. distributor.

Check out a video demonstration of the device, after the jump.

We just stopped by TechnoSource’s booth at the Toy Fair to check out its just-announced Rubik’s TouchCube, a fully touch-sensitive update on the old classic Rubik’s Cube. The new model boasts a few features the old one did not (besides the lights and touchscreen), namely undo and hint options if you get stumped. Each of its six sides are touch-sensitive, and the cube’s got an internal accelerometer so that it only recognizes the touching going on on the top side of the cube. It also remembers your place even if you turn it off — great for those of us who will likely spend years trying to solve it just once. The Rubik’s TouchCube is going to hit shelves this fall for $149.99. Check the gallery and video demo after the break

Continue reading Rubik’s TouchCube hands-on and video

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Rubik’s TouchCube hands-on and video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Radio-controlled cars are cool and all, but you know what’s even cooler? Radio-controlled cars that turn into Robots. B2X’s RCRC switches from a sports car to a truck to an upright robot.

The RCRC has fairly basic controls, moving forward, up, down, left, right, and spinning in place. Users can control it up 1o 100 feet away. Check out a full video of the RCRC transforming, after the jump.

R2 is squealing at me. Honest-to-God stormtroopers are standing guard nearby. Perfect conditions to prove that I’ve outgrown my Padawan pants, and can now move a plastic ball with my mind like a real Jedi.

Since I’m no Yoda, I still need my EEG headgear-which Jedi Uncle Milton built for me and sells as the Star Wars Force Trainer. It picks up my brain waves from sensors on a wireless headset and beams them to the receiver, which moves a floating ball in a tube only if I concentrate just so.

Just as Obi-Wan taught me, I relaxed my mind, unfocused my eyes, like trying to decipher the Snowspeeder Magic Eye poster I had hanging above my bed back home. No dice.

But just as the nearby goblin with flames for hair began to mock me, up it spins. Oh, there it goes, oh glorious Force! The ball is spinning! But R2, being unable to contain himself whenever shit starts levitating around him, of course ruins my concentration with his incessant beeping. But I did it, I really did it.

In all honesty, I think Qui-Gon may have been behind a nearby curtain, giving me a bit of a boost. Because from the point before the ball started spinning to when it took to the air, the only thing I did was cross my arms in disgust. Maybe that’s the sneakiness of the force—or maybe I only mesh with the DARK SIDE. Time to go drink a few dozen Midichlorian smoothies while I think things over.

The Star Wars Force Trainer, and EEG-like brain wave game that kind of works, will go on sale later this year for $100-$130. Video by the level-31 fire-headed Dark Side goblin also known as Matt Buchanan [Toy Fair 2009]

Lego, the toymaker that cemented colorful plastic bricks into our childhood memories, is growing up into a gadget manufacturer.

At the Nuremberg Toy Fair this week, Lego showed off a prototype of a digital camcorder sporting the Lego aesthetic. The camcorder isn’t composed of actual Lego bricks, but the company is considering the possibility as it continues to test prototypes, according to Hobby Media.

The company is clearly responding to rampant Lego fanaticism in the tech community. On Wednesday a hot item was a cellphone from Alcatel featuring a colorful plastic case, which could be switched with other case colors as easily as you’d snap on a Lego piece.

Several electronic hobbyists have used Legos to construct gadgets, too. One of our favorites was a model of a Mac Pro composed of 2,588 Lego bricks (below). On top of the Apple stem stood a Lego man resembling Steve Jobs.

See Also:

• Lovely Logos in Lego
• Back to the Future DeLorean in Lego
• Lego-Cam Uses Fake Bricks to Disappoint Curious Kids
• Video: A Peek Inside the Lego Factory
• LEGO Wins ‘Favorite Toy’ Election in Britain

Photos: HobbyMedia, Gizmodo