Okay, now I usually don’t waste that much time thinking about the fads in children’s toys. When I do, it truly saddens me – I mean, when I was a kid, there were some really great toys. Construx, capsella, lego \/ technics – everything a aspiring robot builder could want. I’m not sure that they were as educational as they were supposed to be – unless you count lessons in how much stress plastic will take as education on materials science – but still, they were really great toys.<\/p>\n
The things the kids play with nowadays…<\/p>\n
But I actually have a specific rant in mind. Tiger Electronics made a small robotic toy called a Furby. My sister got me a spin-off model, the Shelby, for my birthday – along with a really gorgeous wall hanging.<\/p>\n
Now, Shelby is definitely cute. Nice color of purple, soft fur, eyes that look almost eerily alive (especially since they can look around), antennas, everything you could want for a robotic crab… Except for a few little details. The first little detail is that he’s robotic. Not just mildly robotic – and not able to actually move himself from place to place, as would be truly cool. Just robotic enough to get on your nerves. A typical exchange with Shelby goes something like this:<\/p>\n
Shelby: Ay Ay Too-Too Wahooo! (Speaking shelbish, his own personal language)
\nYou: Shut up, shelby.
\nShelby: Shelby say, the shell is Swell!
\nYou: Shut up, shelby
\nShelby: Where is Furby? I want Furby!<\/p>\n
No, I’m not making any of this up. The toy actually asks for another toy by name! Not only that, but a toy I don’t own. And I have no doubt, were I to go out and buy a furby, the two of them would have lots of fun beaming infrared messages back and forth to each other because they do in fact have infrared transcevers.<\/p>\n
But I haven’t gotten to the worst part yet. The evil, insidious, downright malicious part.<\/p>\n
Shelby is lacking something that almost every other piece of electronic equipment in my house has (with the possible exception of the clocks)<\/p>\n
He doesn’t have a power switch.<\/p>\n
In order to shut him up, one must put him through one of the preordained sleep procedures. These basically all take at least 30 seconds – while waking him takes only the lightest tap, or hinging his shell open a little bit so light will touch the CDs cell inside.<\/p>\n
And, if that all weren’t enough, shelby is not a content little robot. He’s not happy to just sit and browse on the batteries he’s been given, when he’s turned on. Oh, no. Shelby wants things, and he’s more insistent – and more critical – than a two year old. As follows:<\/p>\n
Shelby: Shelby say, scratch my back! Back is itchy
\nShelby: Shelby say, scratch my back please
\nShelby: Shelby say, you’re a party pooper
\nShelby: Boring, boring, booooriiing (imitating a 6 year old going on 15, if you know what I mean)<\/p>\n
Of course, he might be in a affectionate mood instead. That’s even worse. There’s nothing quite like having a hunk of plastic (precious little metal in one of these things) demand a hug, or announce in oh-so-cutesy tones that ‘I love ya!’. Right. All four bits of you. Gee, that gives you a total of sixteen emotions…<\/p>\n
The last question, of course, is under what conditions our little purple friend here was assembled. I’m going to hazard a guess and say any robot with sound, light, and motion sensors, the ability to move his eyes, flip his shell open, and flip his antenna – and infrared transceivers for crissake – that goes for $30 is probably not a robot that was built in the old US of A. I’m going to guess it is also not a robot that was built by adults – so the question is, when shelby isn’t making my life miserable, is he and fifty thousand of his ilk making some children’s lives miserable in some sweatshop somewhere?<\/p>\n
Hrmm…<\/p>\n
Hopefully my sister’s not reading this. If she is, Jen, I did appreciate the gift. Really. And the tie-dye was lovely… Until next time, remember, shelby says doncha dare drop me.<\/p>\n
(And every time he does, I get sooo tempted.)<\/p>\n
The least they could have done is make him easily reprogrammable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay, now I usually don’t waste that much time thinking about the fads in children’s toys. When I do, it truly saddens me – I mean, when I was a kid, there were some really great toys. Construx, capsella, lego \/ technics – everything a aspiring robot builder could want. I’m not sure that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4795,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/4795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}