The New York Toy Fair is now over, delivering a whole host of licensed movie and TV cash-ins to make parents everywhere nervously anticipate the new wave of summer blockbuster fads, must-own action figures, gadgets and games set to empty wallets with a relentless fury. If, on the other hand, you have no kids and are like us a big kid yourself – the Toy Fair is a treasure trove! Between our “serious” news the Gadget Helpline will be dipping in and out of the comings and goings in NYC to bring you a few of the best gadget-based toys coming out of the event this week. In our final part, we’ll introduce you to Vietnamese co. TOSY’s droid duo – SketRobo and DiscoRobo – which have received much acclaim at the Toy Fair and were first introduced by their special pop pal Justin Bieber.
TOSY Robotics JSC is the leading Vietnamese manufacturer of robots and high-tech toys and is the only Vietnamese tech company to be worldly recognised by the consumer electronics market. So recognised is TOSY, that they were able to bag American pop personality Justin Bieber to demo one of their bots at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. The expressionate break-dancing version DiscoRobo with a speaker for a belly, which appeared at that show, was accompanied at the New York Toy Fair by another model – SketRobo, an intricately drawing droid which can sketch an image as chosen by a child from a selection of 200 images stored in the bots bonce. TOSY’s aim for the toy is that it can be used as an educational gadget, that a child can sit with and follow the actions of the SketRobo and learn to draw for themselves.
A more advanced version of the SketRobo comes with a built in camera, which captures an image of a person or object and draws it in more accurate detail.
Both toys in TOSY’s Robo range received much applause this week, with SketRobo drawing up the Space Age toy award from social media site Mashable and DiscoRobo boogieing its way to the slightly more prestigious Best Product award from Popular Science Magazine.
Both are set for a pre-Christmas release this year with new and yet-to-be-announced products being devised for 2013.
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