Back at CES in January, there was some hype surrounding some new mind-control products that were due to arrive before the holiday season. Well, two of the more prominent ones, the Star Wars The Force Trainer and Mattel's Mindflex are now shipping.
While images of youngsters decked out in full Star Wars regalia, showing off their Jedi-like powers may seem rather amusing, the question remains whether telekinesis toys and games will become the next big thing--or not.
Both products require you to strap on a lightweight headset that contains sensors to measure your brainwave activity. Focus your concentration, and a stream of air causes a ball to levitate. Relax your thoughts and the ball drops.
The $120 Force Trainer is just about making the ball rise in a tube, while the $80 Mattel Mindflex challenges you to guide a ball through a customizable obstacle course (watch CNET's Scott Stein try it out in this video). Now, if someone could just prove all these mental calisthenics help ward off Alzheimer's and dementia, it would really help move some product.
What do you guys think? Is this the future of gaming or just a gimmick? And how long before will it be before we can ditch the video game controllers and just use our thoughts to control everything?
Additional reading: Hot stuff from the 2009 Toy Fair
First off, let me say I've always wanted to make things move with my mind--at least, some small amount of levitation, like, say, lifting a car through the air like Yoda lifted Luke Skywalker's X-Wing. "Star Wars" has played no small part in that fantasy. Oh, wait, did I say fantasy?
Mattel is releasing a toy this holiday that actually lets people raise and lower things with their mind. Well, make that one thing: a blue foam ball.
Obviously, when Mattel reps called CNET asking for a meeting, we quickly ushered them in. We'd heard about this product at CES and in other applications in the past, including the Swedish Mindball (no, we're not making that up). But Mattel's desire to bring this to the masses is admirable, and as we were soon to find out, bizarre. Look above to see the somewhat embarrassing video if you have any doubts.
Like something dropped in out of a late-'70s science fiction movie, Mindflex comes in two parts: a stark white-and-blue plastic obstacle course for a series of small foam balls, and a strange wireless headset/headband. The parts were unloaded from a shopping bag here at our CNET Labs, and quickly assembled. The obstacle course looks almost like a future version of the old kinetic board game, Mouse Trap. Except, as we said, this one's mind-controlled.
Scott Stein: ready for mind control!
(Credit: Joseph Kaminski/CNET)Mattel's representatives showed how Mindflex worked with a demonstration before throwing me into amateur mind control, raising and lowering the blue ball through a series of plastic hoops and tunnels.
Mindflex announces the start of challenges (with a straight-from-Epcot robotic female voice), and then players can register their successful moves by pressing buttons on the front of the machine. A large knob turns the motorized fan around the circular track, carrying the ball around the mini-course.
The brain control part comes in when raising and lowering the ball (activating and deactivating the fan), which is all triggered via what the headset is reading from my little brain. To be specific, the control is done digitally: the headband senses concentration and relaxation, and raises and lowers the ball accordingly. Then, it was my turn.
... Read more
It's no secret that gaming's presence at CES can barely be felt, but we were lucky enough to find some diamonds in the rough, including a few that made us want to phone a lawyer.
While there was no new gaming software to be found, there was a respectable amount of gaming hardware and accessories that stole our attention. Nyko stood out with the company's Wand and
...Read the full post at CNET's CES 2009 blog.
'77 throwback
(Credit: Matthew Fitzgerald)For all you PSP and Nintendo DS addicts, we're taking you back, way back in time. It's the year 1977, where disco rules and the interwebs is just a twinkle in Al Gore's eye--it may seem like a long time ago to some, and for others it may even supersede your existence. That year though, I can remember emptying my piggy bank and running down to Woolworths to make my first handheld game purchase: Mattel Football. A very simple game, and quite prehistoric when compared to the handheld games of today. It didn't have Wi-Fi, and you couldn't buy different game discs or cartridges. For this handheld game in particular it was football and football only. As for sound, it was just bleeps and blips and it ran on a single 9V battery--not a rechargeable one like the PSP and the DS--but I spent hours playing it. Like I said the game was simple; it was all about offense, all you could do is score and since the 70's was about scoring--although of a different type--this game fit in to that era nicely? Even better, it had two levels of game play: Pro 1 and Pro 2. As for graphics, if you wanted to call them that, they were all red lit dots and you were the brightest of the six. The object: Get across the screen without getting tackled by the five remaining dots--a simple concept, but not easily accomplished. It wasn't much to look at, but back then it was all we had and it more than fit the bill.
Stay tuned, for our next stroll down memory lane we'll look at the Mego Corp. 2-XL.
(Credit:
Akihabara News)
It's pink, it plays MP3s, and it's got a "Barbie" signature. Is there really anything else left to say?
It's unclear whether the Korean-made "INNO B2" is licensed by Mattel, but we would be surprised if it was. The toymaker already has its "Barbie Girls" MP3 player, which is tied into its whole Webkinz-like online strategy.
Whatever the case, this player has an OLED screen, 2GB of built-in storage, a radio tuner, and a USB port, according to Akihabara News. It could also be easily mistaken for a makeup compact because it has a mirror for quick touch-ups. But for those who aren't quite ready to accept a virtual Barbie, there's always the lip-syncing "Chat Divas Barbie Doll."
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The Barbie Girls MP3 player doubles as a dress-up doll.
(Credit: Mattel)NEW YORK--Who's running things over at Mattel?
The Barbie Girls MP3 player that doubles as a paper doll with plastic clothes is now out.
First, I don't think parents should pay $59.99 for an MP3 player with 512MB of storage, even if you can dress it up. For that price I'd recommend spending a little more and getting their child the "big kid" iPod Nano or Shuffle you know they really want. To be fair, the device can hold a microSD card of up to 2GB.
But that's not my real problem with this tech toy.
Plugging the MP3 player into a computer grants the owner entry into new places in the BarbieGirls.com virtual world that non-buyers of the device won't have access to. It also gives you access to "exclusive" virtual purses and pets.
Seriously?
While I understand Mattel's desire to offer some sort of reward for buying the device, the concept of creating a virtual velvet rope seems destructive to the Barbie image the company has been struggling to improve.
"It's the next-generation fashion doll. We've always evolved with how girls play. It's all about music, being online and fashion," Lauren Dougherty, director of PR/Communications for Mattel Brands, told CNET News.com from the floor of DigitalLife 2007.
If Mattel is serious about reinventing Barbie's image and keeping up with the Webkinz of the world, maybe it should think about the overall picture.
As this writer was once a little girl who drooled over the outfits created for Barbie by some of the coolest fashion designers, I'm not anti-Barbie in the least. I just wish she was a little more Brenda Starr and a little less Paris Hilton. This is 2007, right?
Of course, this is the same company that in 1992 thought it was a good idea to make "Math class is tough" one of the lines for its Teen Talk Barbie.
We all know how well that went over.
(Credit:
Mattel)
I haven't checked in with Barbie since I was about 10, but apparently a lot has happened since then. Barbie's sartorial choices notwithstanding (satin halter tops?), the fact is, she's getting kind of geeky.
At the American International Toy Fair going on this week in New York, Mattel introduced a Barbie that connects to an MP3 player and can sing the songs that are playing AND answer the phone. OK, the Chat Divas Barbie Doll doesn't actually sing, she lip syncs and dances to the music. But when the phone rings, you can hold the receiver up to her ear and she'll "answer" the phone.
As one fellow Craver noted, the gadget-toting angle is a cute idea, but there are plenty of songs that should never come out of Barbie's mouth. For instance, I think hearing my favorite childhood toy belting out any Pussycat Dolls song might scar me permanently.
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