Coolest Toys

The fact that kids are tech obsessed isn’t lost on a company like Bndai. The creators of Power Rangers have created a new IM Mobile texting device for girls which lets them keep in touch with their friends without killing their parents cellphone bills. Dubbed the SmartBerry, it looks kinda like a Sidekick with retracting LCD touch screen that reveals a keypad for text messaging and IM. IT also hass features like game play and a strange business card mode.

Kids can save up to 30 addresses and picture icons of their favorite friends in the address book, can send email via WiFi, send text messages and IM, and play a host of cute little “Pikachu” like game that Japanese girls just love. But what’s really missing is an mp3 player! Come on, Bandai! EVERYTHING has an mp3 player these days!

Cost is about $100.

Hat Tip – D’Vice

Kids love treehouses. But sometimes a kid can’t have one because of small back yards, an overly worried helicopter parent, or a dad who simply doesn’t have the construction gene in his DNA. Well, there’s not much that can be done about the last one, except whipping out the checkbook and hiring a contractor, but even the most hovering parent would be impressed by this indoor treehouse bedroom designed and built by the gang at KidTropolis.

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Matt Groening has created yet another cool Simpsons toy set with these vinyl Springfield characters. The characters are about 3” tall and sell for about $8.00 each. And as cool as they are, there is a problem that makes me wish to state unequivocally that you shouldn’t buy them. And that’s the fact that Kidrobot, the manufacturer of these toys, are selling them in blind assortment boxes to make it next to impossible to collect the entire 24 figure set without layout a boatload for duplicates and praying to the gods you don’t break the bank before getting them all.

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It seems that the gang over at NERF are watching LEGO’s success with video gaming and have decided to see they can expand their line of cool foam firepower items into the digital world. Working in concert with Electronic Arts (EA), Nerf will be launching “Nerf N-Strike” for the Wii and producing an interesting line of Nerf/Wii controllers which can work with the video game but also shoot foam projectiles just like other Nerf firearms.

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Believe it or not, according to the latest surveys, more girls play video games than boys. And one of their more favorite video games to play are both Guitar Hero and Rock Band. So it’s high time our fairer sex had their axes with which to run a digital riff while jamming classic tunes to the popular video games. And that’s where Disney recording artists Ally & AJ come in.

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In what amounts to the coolest movie/toy tie-in this week, Mattel has released a Kung Fu Panda version of their classic game Rockem Sockem Robots. Instead of the blue and red robots beating the snot out of each other in an attempt to knock each other’s block off, players can now control Po and Tai Lung in the ring. The game pits our hero Po against his arch nemesis Tai Lung from the Dreamworks Animated movie KUNG FU PANDA. But this is more than just a movie-tie in overlay of an old classic. There’s actually a cool Kung Fu twist on the classic game.

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Sure, you can pick up a copy of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor and play video games until your eyes bleed, but how about an old school alternative? Miniature playing games have been around since the 70s. I remember not only playing these games based on dragons and knights locked in mortal combat for treasure and points, but also painting tiny lead figures which would act as our doppelgangers in the campaigns that ensued. And in the last 30 years, we’ve seen MPGs in space, in the wild west, in the Star Wars universe, in the not so distant nuclear future, and now, in the wartime past.

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Kids can be pretty hard on toys. They leave em, drop em, break em, dunk em in water. So when Fisher Price had the idea to create a kid tough portable DVD player, the first thing that came to my mind was, I hope it’s “cheap.” Unfortunately, hovering around a $150 price tag, cheap isn’t in the picture – at least financially.

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The Brother’s Brick have gotten their hands on a few pictures of upcoming LEGO sets to be released for 2009. The sets include new Star Wars and Indiana Jones collections, but also a pirate ship and a huge farming columbine sets.

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What a great idea. A Canadian movie theater is renting out their movie theaters for video game parties in order for video gamers to join en masse to play such games as Halo, Call of Duty, and others who can enjoy hard core gaming on the silver screen.

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