Tag Archives: toy

This R2-D2 Tamagotchi Is Definitely The Droid You’re Looking For

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Looking for a new droid friend after your last one got shot up by Stormtroopers who were aiming for something else entirely? Well, you’re in luck, because this R2-D2 Tamagotchi is available for pre-order (affiliate link). Available in two colorways (white with blue accents, or blue with white accents), the digital droid pet is sure to be this year’s must-have stocking stuffer when it starts shipping this November.

R2 can be trained in 19 different skills and caretakers must keep him charged and cleaned by playing holochess and firefighting minigames. There are an additional seven minigames that can be unlocked based on his current skill level. And instead of dying like previous Tamagotchi pets, R2 will be hauled off by Jawas if you prove neglectful for too long.

I can’t even begin to estimate how many Tamagotchi digital pets I killed in my youth due to forgetfulness, but suffice it to say their graves could probably fill an entire hard drive. Am I more responsible now? I’ll let you know in November, presumably while bartering with a Jawa over a dead R2 unit.

[via GamesRadar and StarWars]

This slinky planter is a throwback to the iconic 1940’s toy and we need them!

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Richard James invented the classic toy which has become a symbol of our childhood memories. Bucharest-based designer Andreea Cornila pays homage to the toy with Slinky, a plant stand shaped like a vertical coil spring. Slinky can be both a floating stand for your beloved plants or take the form of a sleek side table with a soft matte surface. Each planter is hand-spun from a single sheet of aluminum while the spring is made from an elastic type of steel.

The CMF is minimal, organic, and timeless with the various height springs and the light gradient paint job that makes it a perfect fit for any indoor or outdoor setup. “The shape and motion of the Slinky toy fascinate me, as it offers a multitude of expressive silhouettes that I wish to explore and capture further in my upcoming collections,” says Cornilia. Slinky’s versatile components can also be combined separately, allowing its user to interact directly with the collection, it is a nominee for the The Isola Design Awards which aims to empower designers to be innovative in their products and design processes by experimenting with existing technologies as well as creating new ones. They award prizes in four categories: Furniture & Product Design, Innovation In Design, Sustainable Design & New Materials, Smart Living & Mobility Design – all verticals that are needed as we go from solving the pandemic crisis to the climate crisis.

The ISOLA Design District team is genuinely committed to work with designers and give them a platform that is about them/the design instead of just being an honorary badge on their portfolios – it’s the design award show we have always wanted to see!

Designer: Andreea Cornila

These fidget-friendly strips stick to your gadgets for discreetly relieving stress

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Each of us has a different way of reacting during stress and anxiety or when under pressure or in a conversation. While most people are overly composed, some of us tend to fidget around – biting on a pen cap, shaking the legs, moving around in the chair, or doing what not! Though it is customary to fidget, your constant movement can be distracting and annoying to people everywhere. Enter Fidget Strips; designed primarily to provide the fidgeting hands a light rubbing, scratching the surface; these strips are essentially unnoticeable to others.

There are many types of sensory toys, fidget spinners on the market that have been helpful to people – children and adults – in coping with their fidgeting habit. However, suppose you typically fidget with your fingers. In that case, these colorful and different textured Fidget Strips will provide you satisfying feeling without distracting those around you in a board meeting, office cubicle, classroom, or even when traveling back home.

Unlike the other sensory toys that are noticeable and make noise, Fidget Strips offer a quiet way for you to satiate your urge to fidget. Made from durable material and employing strong adhesive on the back, the strips can stick fittingly to a smooth surface. Once stuck in place, you can gently touch, rub, or scratch them with your fingertips whenever you feel fidgety.

The Fidget Strips can stick to smartphones, laptops, tablets, notebooks, tables, armchairs, or any other smooth surface for your convenience. These are offered in two textures – satin and rough – to meet different requirement sets. The rough textured strips have a rubbery feel that one can scratch or rub on, whereas the satin finish is more like a snuggly blanket you can touch and feel for relaxation.

Measuring an inch wide and about 4-inches in length, these non-intrusive strips allow you to manage and control fidgeting without leaving a mark on the surface it is adhered to. Interestingly, the strips are reusable, so you can easily remove one from the laptop and stick it to the phone’s back if needed. The Fidget Strips are offered in black, blue-green, and yellow-red colors and patterns for visual stimulation in addition to their tactile simulation.

The easy-to-maintain strips can be wiped clean with a damp cloth, and they come in a pack of five, priced at $9.99. So when you need to focus under stress, come up on top in anxiety, just touch or scratch over the Fidget Strips and instantly restore the feeling of calm without worrying about being judged while fidgeting. No one’s going to notice that constant movement anymore!

Designer: Fidget Strips

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LEGO’s DIY “ship in the bottle” is much more fun than owning the real thing!

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Looking every bit like the real deal, the Ship In A Bottle is the latest from the clever master-builders at LEGO Ideas who churn out magical numbers such as the LEGO Typewriter we saw last week. Made using 962 pieces of LEGO (although a majority of them are just the water under the ship), the Ship In A Bottle comes with everything you’d expect, including a ship with 3 sails, a transparent bottle, a stand, a nameplate (the ship’s called the Leviathan), and even a cork-stopper made from LEGO bricks!

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I’m not really a LEGO fanboy, so this is the first time I’m seeing a LEGO bottle made from actual transparent pieces. The bottle assembles around the ship, making it much easier to build the ship first and then construct the bottle (as opposed to authentic ship-in-bottles that are painstakingly assembled within pre-existing glass bottles). The bottle sports its own stopper, with a wax seal, all made from LEGO bricks, and rests on a nifty decorative stand, with a faux compass underneath. All in all, the entire artifact measures 3 inches in height, and 13 inches in width, making it a perfect thing to place on a mantelpiece or bookshelf.

Like all LEGO Ideas projects, the Ship In The Bottle started out as a fan-made design (from LEGO master-builder JakeSadovich77) that was voted the most popular creation by the LEGO community. Based on these votes, LEGO selected the idea and brought it to life. The LEGO Ship In The Bottle is now available on LEGO’s online store as well as on Amazon.

Designer: JakeSadovich77 for LEGO

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DIY Captain America Shield Can Bounce Back: Fibers, Assembled

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There are a thousand replicas and scale models of Captain America’s iconic shield, from action figure accessories and cheap children’s toys to full-on display pieces. But none of them actually work like Cap’s weapon – you can throw them, but that’s like playing catch with a cat. That thing isn’t coming back. Unless you’re YouTuber JLaservideo, who cobbled together a fairly simple but surprisingly effective life-size toy that can bounce back near you.

JLaservideo used fiberglass to create an elastic ring, allowing the shield to deform and bounce back. He then molded the rest of the shield out of carbon fiber to keep it light while still being durable. The key factor that JLaservideo figured out was that he couldn’t directly connect the carbon fiber plate to the fiberglass ring. That version wasn’t elastic enough, and the stress from being thrown on walls even just a few times would damage the plate. So he made a smaller carbon fiber plate, then used latex strips to connect the plate to the ring, creating a buffer between the two main pieces. He also wrapped the ring in carbon fiber for added durability.

You can skip to around 5:12 in the video for the build and about 15:23 for the final demo:

Obviously, JLaservideo’s toy doesn’t bounce back perfectly, but it works well enough that you can mimic Cap’s double wall bounces with it and have to rush only a few steps to have the shield float back to your arms. Speaking of which, he also used small pieces of neodymium magnets to strap the shield to his wrist. If Disney can make a retractable lightsaber, I don’t see why they couldn’t make a more polished version of this toy.

The Tesla Cybertruck won’t deliver before 2022, but Hot Wheels has an RC Cybertruck you can buy today!

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Designed at 1:10th scale, Mattel’s Cybertruck replica comes with its own remote control as well as a Cyberquad. As far as I can tell, the windows on the toy pickup truck break much more easily…

Mattel’s 1:10 RC Cybertruck comes with that unmistakably polarizing design, authentic wheels + tire treads, working head and taillights, and a flat-bed that’s big enough to fit its free-rolling Cyberquad. The truck itself is controlled by a pretty neat-looking controller that mimics the shape of the Cybertruck’s own steering wheel, and allows you to operate the truck up to 12 MPH (which may seem paltry at first, but it makes Mattel’s Cybertruck one of the fasted remote-controlled cars on the market).

The RC Cybertruck’s available on Mattel’s website (you don’t need to wait till 2022 for yours)… and at just $100, it’s about the same price as the real Cybertruck’s preorder. You know, the refundable preorder that you can definitely cancel for this delightfully wicked RC truck?

Designer: Mattel (Hot Wheels)

This glass orb filled with bio-luminescent plankton is brighter than my future…

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If you’ve ever had bioluminescent beaches on your bucket list (I know I have), Pyrofarms’ Bio Orb may just be the closest thing to actually being around those bioluminescent waters. The orb, which comes with its own pouch filled with seawater and living bioluminescent plankton (dinoflagellates, if you’re fancy) that activate when moved. Just place the liquid-filled orb on a window that gets enough sunlight and the plankton get charged through the day. Give them a gentle swirl at night (or in darkness) and they glow with that incredible blue aura, looking like you’ve got galaxies suspended in the glass orb. The orb even comes with its own octopus stand, looking like some Kraken carrying a magical sphere of sorts.

The dinoflagellates are living organisms that follow the circadian clock, like humans, sensing when its night time (past sunset). The closer it gets to midnight, the more they shine. All you need to do is care for them by keeping the Dino in moderate lighting during the day so that the plankton charge themselves with nutrients for your night-light-show!

Designer: Pyrofarms

Think outside the “block” with these magnetic, origami-inspired building toy

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On Yanko, we’ve covered various products and concepts that have, in some way, expanded upon the design of conventional building blocks. Out of all the products I’ve seen so far, the Clixo magnetic building set presents the most dramatic change to this classic idea, by disregarding the need for block-shaped pieces entirely.

Instead of sticking to the tried-and-true design of geometric shapes, the Clixo pieces are thin and flexible, almost like a sheet of origami paper. Some of the pieces mimic the shape of a fidget spinner, with four leg-like structures with circular, magnetic connectors. What are the advantages of this design? Firstly, it allows a Clixo to do what a lego can’t: fold inward and attach to its own legs. Secondly, it allows you to build anywhere (literally). Conventional building blocks must be stacked on a flat surface, otherwise, they’ll topple over. Clixo pieces aren’t limited by that constraint. You can build a new creation on your lap, wrap them around your wrist like a bracelet, or even stick them on your fridge like magnets.

In addition to its sleek, flexible design, the Clixo pieces are very satisfying to play with. The magnets click together in a way that’s just as satisfying as snapping two legos together. You don’t have to be a budding architect or builder. If you or your child have idle hands, the Clixo’s will keep them very busy. In that respect, Clixo has the potential to become the modern-day lego set. It gives builders a new way to play, encouraging them to imagine new 3D builds that weren’t possible with standard blocks.

Buy now: Sets starting at $29.99