(Credit:
Chip Chicklets)
If you're not a parent, you might not see the immediate value in a pair of headphones designed especially for kids. But if you have progeny of iPod-bearing age--which will soon come before they're crawling, at this rate--then the need for Mad Catz's "AirDrive" headphones is all too clear.
Anyone who's been forced to endure a multi-hour car ride with children aboard knows that they'll never hear you, or anything else for that matter, because they generally keep the volume on their MP3 and DVD players turned up somewhere between 9 and 10. The child-sized AirDrives are apparently aimed at this infuriating age, contoured for smaller ears for a good fit that still allows them to hear grown-up voices or fire-engine sirens.
They're not the cheapest pair at $70, but Chip Chicklets was impressed with the sound quality. More important, the little brats won't be able to use them as an excuse to ignore you.
(Credit:
Disney)
You know, it only occurred to me until very recently that karaoke means something very different for the younger generation than it does for mine when I was a kid. When I was in elementary school, we had roller skating parties and laser tag parties and arcade pizzeria parties--but no karaoke parties, because that was dorky and no one would sing, and since we were well under the legal drinking age, no one could break the ice with, "Okayyy, let's get a round of SoCo and Lime and then see if anyone wants to try the mic, how about?" If we were going to have anything to do with singing, it had to be in a massive group. Anything solo was for the icky show-offs that everyone only pretended to like.
But getting up in front of all your little frenemies and singing like William Hung seems to be an integral part of childhood in this post-boy band era. Kids these days appear to all be wholeheartedly addicted to American Idol and that freaking High School Musical thing. (What is it about? Should I be glad that I don't know?) And apparently it's necessary to have the ability to share your lovely singing voice with everyone wherever you go, which is why the geniuses behind High School Musical's toy tie-ins have created a sleepover duffel bag so that you can be the life of every fifth-grade party.
This shiny purple piece of luggage comes with speakers that unzip at each end, space in the middle for your MP3 player of choice, and the obligatory microphone hook-up. I'm sure there's also plenty of room for a pink Razr, your cutest pajamas, pictures of all the boys from your homeroom, and several bottles of Hard Candy nail polish.
Personally, I think showing up even at a fourth-grade slumber party with one of these would be, to quote Mean Girls, "social suicide." But considering my friends only have sleepovers when they're in no state to remember which subway will take them home at 3:45 AM, and considering that I'm old enough to remember Billy Ray Cyrus as "that country singer whose one hit made everybody run screaming from the dance floor" rather than "the dad on Hannah Montana," maybe I just don't get it.
Kids these days...
(Via Shiny Shiny)
(Credit:
Gizmodo)
As many a deafened parent of pre-teen kids will tell you, Disney's High School Musical is a force to be reckoned with. It has gone well beyond its TV-movie origins to become an international phenemenon, with live shows, DVDs, CDs and maddeningly repetitive pop tunes that are driving innumerable moms and dads to the brink of insanity.
All of which makes it a perfect storm, of course, for a major merchandizing blitz. Never one to shy away from a marketing challenge, Amazon is offering a "High School Musical Wii Bundle With Microphone" next month. But Gizmodo notes that Disney is saving the real prizes for the fall: an LCD TV and an iPod clock radio, both in hallway-locker themes, for $300 and $60 respectively. The TV has a 15-inch Sharp screen and is ready for HD transmissions.
Either would be an effective counter to Caroline McCarthy's pirate TV.
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