Dave’s Cool Toys Blog

Ride-on Dalek in action

My son and I are fans of the new Doctor Who series. I had watched the old series only briefly when I was younger and never got into it, but the new series has become one of my favorite shows.

So something caught my attention today. It’s the Dr. Who Ride-in Dalek. It has an inflatable body sitting on a high density plastic base and is battery operated with 360-degree steering! It stands 128 cm tall (a little over 4 feet). There are lights inside the "cab" and it has 10 sounds and phrases. It’s fitted with a soft rubber bumper to protect furniture and is suitable for indoors and outdoors (as long as there’s a flat surface to drive on). It will come in just red at first and blue will follow later in the year. Maybe we’ll have more colors later on.

Pricing is tentatively set at £199.99 ($317.36), which is a bit steep, I think. But hey, how can you put a price on becoming a Dalek?

	Cubee Dalek

I don’t know if or when it will be available in the US. It’s manufactured by Kids@Play, which is in Wales and is being distributed in the UK by Zappies.

While I was researching this post I also came across a very cool paper craft Dalek. It’s not the accurate Dalek shape, but a Cubee, which is a square papercraft representation of an object or character. You can download it, print it out, and assemble it yourself for your own desktop Cubee Dalek.

I printed one out and my son, Alex put it together for me (pictured). Aside from having a little trouble keeping the tabs in place, it came out really well. It’s also fairly delicate printed on standard 20 lb. Bond paper, so I’d suggest printing it on a heavier stock. Enjoy!

Uncle Milton with some of his nieces & nephews

Milton Levine, better known as Uncle Milton, passed away January 16, 2011 at the age of 97. He died of natural causes at an assisted living facility.

Uncle Milton was the co-inventor of the Ant Farm and a legendary contributor to the toy industry and pop culture. He was the co-founder of the company that would become Uncle Milton Industries.

He founded the company in 1946 selling novelties and introduced the ant farm in 1956. The company has sold more than 20 million farms and it’s been recognized as one of the top 100 Toys of the Century by the Toy Industry Association.

Uncle Milton was at a Fourth of July picnic in 1956 and was watching some ants. He started thinking about collecting ants in a jar as a child and announced "We should make an antarium."

He and his brother-in-law, E. J. Cossman then invented the iconic plastic habitat with the little barnyard that everybody is familiar with. They hired collectors to obtain red harvester ants from the Mojave Desert and paid them a penny apiece. One supplier showed up at Milton’s office with a jar of ants and when he couldn’t get paid the amount he wanted, he opened the jar onto his desk, releasing ants all over the office.

They were faced with some unique challenges when they began their business. The first was setting up the two-stage sale process so that customers could receive their live ants. They also needed to get permission from each state to ship live ants. You still can’t get them in Hawaii, where they are considered an infestation danger (you have to find your own).

The ant farm hasn’t changed much over the years. They had to use a different glue when they discovered that it was toxic to some ants. And in recent years they have replaced the sand that they used to use with volcanic ash, which makes it easier to watch the ants.

Uncle Milton has said that he thought the ant farm would sell for about two years and he sometimes joked that the ants’ most amazing feat was putting his three children through college. Two of those children, Steve and Ellen have been actively involved in Uncle Milton Industries since Milton’s retirement. The company now sells a wide range of products.

Goodbye Uncle Milton, we’ll miss you.

Some Lego Architecture iconic buildings

Last week my son and I were in New York City to see the King Tut exhibit.

We also walked down to the store, Obscura, to visit. We’ve been watching the show "Oddities" on the Discovery Channel, which features the store along with it’s owners and employees. Unfortunately, they were filming in the store when we got there and we didn’t want to interrupt, so we didn’t go in.

We also stopped in at the Barnes and Noble and I perused the toy section. Most of the toys they carried were pretty common. But one thing I noticed was the Lego Architecture Sets.

They are absolutely lovely.

But I have to wonder, "are they really Lego?" Basically, you have one thing to build. You follow the instructions and it’s done. There are 77 pieces in the Empire State Building, so it shouldn’t take too long to build (I expect at least one piece is the base). The Seattle Space Needle
is only 57 pieces and they are all pretty custom pieces.

So you are basically just buying a model of a building that you put together. OK. That’s fine. But is it Lego?

Wikipedia’s entry says "Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects."

So do these sets qualify? I don’t know.

But they are beautiful and the packaging is very classy (that’s what originally caught my attention on the shelf).

Prices range from about $20.00 to $80.00. Or you can buy a complete set of 6 for $259.95. Recommended for ages 10 and up.

Thomas Casey, an inventor has created an interesting amusement park ride which he calls the Rings of Saturn. It’s something of a mashup of a merry-go-round and Ferris wheel. He claims to have patented the ride, but I was unable to locate a patent in his name or one for anything similar and the document he displays in his video does not show any specifics.

His ride is insane. The mechanism would be huge and massive. It would have to be suspended very high in the air to clear the ground. I’m not sure how you would load the inner circle of riders. And the ride doesn’t seem all that much more exciting than simpler, current rides that are in actual operation. In addition, when you watch the ride run, some seats don’t really move much at all, while other are whipping around at ridiculous speeds. The folks at the axis of the outer ring barely move at all, just flipping over every half-turn. Hopefully the full-size version will run more smoothly than the model, which seems to get a little crazy every half-turn.

But, it certainly seems like he spent quite a bit of time and money on his model and idea. I think he has more of a future as a model builder than a ride inventor.

I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t seem to have a website and his listed email is fairly generic (I sent him an email, but received no reply).

It would certainly be fun to watch it run. I’m just not sure I’d ride it.

Would you ride this thing? Do you think we’ll see it an amusement park anytime soon?

	Snowman’s journey

Some guys at Panasonic who call themselves SPARKS got a message on their facebook page from a girl in Bahrain named Amna who’s brother, Saleh had never seen snow. They happened to have new super-insulating panels at their disposal called U-VACUA. So what did they do?

They started in Japan, made a snowman cast out of Styrofoam, filled the Styrofoam mold with snow, covered all 6 sides with U-VACUA, placed the box in a wooden crate and sent it from Japan to Bahrain.

But before the actual trip, they did a test of their idea in the closest thing they could find to the desert… A sauna. They used shaved ice, made a little snowman, packed it in the U-VACUA, and left him in the sauna for 24 hours. When they took him out, he was still frozen. Success! Now they’re ready for the real trip.

So they went out to the real snow, loaded up their form with about 67 L of snow, sealed up the snowman in the U-VACUA and sent him on his 40 hour journey to Bahrain.

What is U-VACUA?

U-VACUA is a glass fibrous core sealed inside a plastic-Metal foil which has then had all the air sucked out of it. This creates insulation that is 20 times more than polyurethane foam. They use it for refrigerators, thermal pots, cooler boxes and attic insulation.

Did the snowman survive his 5,314 mile journey? Did Saleh get to experience snow?

Yes, of course he survived. If not, I probably wouldn’t be writing this post about the adventure.

Check out the video below of the adventure and the excited Bahrainian kids when they arrived with their snowman.

Via Gizmodo

A very expensive crafty Christmas

It’s the last shopping day of the holiday season. So I got to wondering what the most expensive toy on Amazon might be.

So I did a quick search and my results were the award-winning Crafty Christmas costing $726,098.00!

Wow!

What could possibly make Crafty Christmas that expensive?

A quick look at the description made it clear. The kit includes "holiday stickers, buttons, felt, sequins, sticky gems and more". That stuff doesn’t come cheap!

Crafty Christmas isn’t technically sold by Amazon. Clicking the link actually takes you off-site to the actual reseller. On their site the price is a slightly more modest $29.98, leading me to believe that the price on Amazon is a mistake. (You think?)

So I continued on to try to find the most expensive legitimate toy. The next most expensive was a Modular Playground costing $50,441.40. That price certainly makes a bit more sense, although I wonder what made them add the 40 cents to the price. But it’s not quite a toy.

Next I found the "Estes Apollo Saturn Flying Scale Model" for $14,986.75. Hmmm. I don’t think that’s an accurate price. There was no description, but I found it elsewhere on Amazon for about $70. My search continues.

What I found next is amazing.

The Stunning Hansa Grand Dragon Could be Yours

It’s the Hansa Grand Dragon. The price is $12,499.95. And I think that one is legitimate.

The Hansa Grand Dragon is a full-scale plush animal. It’s 116" long (over 10 feet) 40" wide and 98" high. Hansa plush animals are hand-sewn inside-out resulting in minimization of seams. Their bodies are "sculpted" so you get the impression of underlying musculature. Some of their creations have as many as 240 different parts. Stuffing is done by hand and carefully placed. Since they are not machine made, each one is unique, with slight variations. The Grand Dragon is a special order. Oddly, Amazon charges $8.95 shipping.

Hansa makes more reasonably priced plush and they do look absolutely realistic. Prices are in the more reasonable $10-$50 range. I absolutely love the Plush Elephant Mouse costing just $14.00. And if you’d like to see an amazing example of their quality, check out the Beige Hen, costing $49.75. It’s absolutely worth the price.

I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping today at the King of Prussia Mall. There was a store there selling Robohorses.

What is a Robohorse? Imagine a rocking horse that doesn’t stay in one place, but runs around like a real horse. They’re actually pretty cool. Although I don’t know a lot of people that have enough room in their house to ride a robotic horse around it.

The prices weren’t really to bad. They ran up to about $250.00.

Check out my video from today below.

Toys R Us will be open 88 hours straight

Toys-R-Us stores will open at 6:00 a.m. this morning, December 21, 2010 and stay open until 10:00 p.m. Christmas Eve.

Toys-R-Us has promised that they will be getting regular deliveries right up to the end so they will be fully stocked.

And they’ll be running specials such as Midnight Specials from Midnight to 6:00 a.m. each day.

If you’re looking for a Toys-R-Us store near you, there’s a store locator here.

As long as I’m on the subject, I’ll take this opportunity to complain about the Toys-R-Us logo. I can’t tell you how much it annoys me that they have their "R" backwards. Kids see that all the time. I’m not crazy about the whole "R" thing to begin with, but then to have it backwards isn’t right. I think we need a petition to make them turn their "R" around.

Piggyback Bandz

Unless you were hiding under a rock, you probably know that one of the big toy fads lately were Silly Bandz.

First I want to say that when I first saw Silly Bandz, I had a "why didn’t I think of that" moment. Then I had a "why didn’t anyone else think of that before" moment.

Now I’m having a "why didn’t the company that makes Silly Bandz think of this" moment.

The toy that made me think that is Piggyback Bandz. They took the shaped rubber band one step further and added an extra little band to the edge. When you wear them, the little extra shape sticks up in 3D on your wrist.

	Football Piggyback Bandz

Aside from the usual shapes, they also have letters. The letters are great because you can combine bands and spell words and short phrases with them on your wrist.

Piggyback Bandz come in eight themes at this time: Glam, Football, Groovy, Sealife, Alphabet, Cool Rides, Safari and Extra Letters.

The only place I’ve found them for sale is on their own website.

Here’s a quick promotional video of them. It’s not a very good video. But it shows the concept.

Barbie’s Fashion Fairytale Palace

If you’re looking for a great deal on a last-minute Christmas gift for a little girl, head on over to Amazon where they currently have an amazing sale on the Barbie Fashion Fairytale Palace. Regularly priced at $114.99 it’s currently on sale for only $34.99.

It’s inspired by the new animated Barbie movie "Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale" so little girls can act out their favorite scenes from the movie.

Features include pink carpet, a VIP drawbridge, movable dance floor elevator, vanity area, and transforming bed to wardrobe (apparently space is limited in fairy castles).

Since it’s over $25.00 you also qualify for Super Saver Shipping. It will be delivered in 5-8 business days for free.

via coolest-toys.com

It’s Christmas, and what could be better than an unexpected performance of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at a mall food court.

On November 13, 2010 over 100 participants took place in this great Flash Mob. Crank up the volume and watch the video.

Santa won’t get past this Chimney undetected

It’s Christmas Eve and you’ve decided to catch Santa once-and-for-all. So you camp out on the sofa and wait for the jolly man. But, you doze off and when you wake up it’s Christmas morning and there are presents under the tree and your milk and cookies are nibbled and sipped. Now you have to wait another year to try again.

Well, Thomas Cane, of San Rafael California had enough of the routine and decided to do something about it.

So he invented "A children’s Christmas Stocking device useful for visually signaling the arrival of Santa Claus by illuminating an externally visible light source having a power source located within said device.

He was serious about it too. On August 19, 1994 he filed a Patent with the US Patent Office for the device. It’s patent number 5,523,741.

Here are a few tidbits from the patent:

"Modern folklore includes many mystical entities such as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Etc. The most widely recognized and embraced by young children is Santa Claus—a plump, white-bearded and red-suited gentleman who delivers presents to "good" children at Christmas time."

	Santa-detecting stocking

"…there are no such prior art arrangements known to applicant which includes a light transmissive three dimensional hollow recognizable character rendition which is capable of being illuminated to signal the arrival of Santa Claus."

"This is particularly important to young children, providing reassurance that the child’s good behavior has in fact been rewarded by Santa Claus."

This is a good one…

"…the presently preferred embodiment of the children’s device… comprises a Christmas stocking having an enclosure therein to accommodate small Christmas presents/treats. The stocking includes a top portion, a heel portion and a toe portion. The stocking is preferably constructed out of a conventional cloth or synthetic material. As will be recognized by one skilled in the art, the stocking may comprise various conventional pliable materials."

Bascially, the way it works is you string ribbon across the fireplace and attach it to the stocking. When Santa arrives, he inadvertently pulls on the ribbon as he attempts to gain access to your home through the fireplace opening, which pulls on a switch, activating lights on the stockings and electronic music, if you’ve turned on that feature. An alternate version would use Santa cutouts rather than stockings which would move his arms, legs and head, doing a little dance. He has covered other holidays as well in the patent such as a version for the Easter Bunny.

Is Thomas Cane trying to catch Santa Clause? Maybe. But his invention is really meant as a product that "Santa" would purposely activate once the kids have gone to bed and the presents have "arrived", so they can check it when they get up in the morning to be sure Santa was there.

I checked online and found other similar items that are available now such as the Santa Evidence Kit. This kit has items that Santa has "left behind" as evidence to children that he was there such as a torn piece of his suit, a sleigh bell, a stencil and magic snow to create a snowy boot print, and more.

Edison Talking Doll with mechanism

As Christmas draws near and we’re all shopping for the newest electronic devices, I thought we’d step back a few years to one of the earliest technology-driven toys.

In 1890 Thomas Edison began selling the very first talking doll. It was quite a technological achievement at the time. Aside from being the first of a long line of talking toys, it was also the very first phonograph marketed for home entertainment with a pre-recorded cylinder.

The Edison Talking Doll stood 22 inches high and weighed four pounds. It was constructed with a metal body and articulated wooden arms and legs. There were two versions of bisque heads, one from Simon & Halbig and one from Bahr & Proschild. The price was $10 with a simple chemise, or $20-25 with full dress.

The dolls came with a mechanism inside that would play a short nursery rhyme when the handle was turned. There were 12 available titles such as Little Jack Horner or Mary Had a Little Lamb and the disks were not interchangeable. There was no motor mechanism, so children were expected to crank the motor at a steady rate in order to hear the recording properly.

The very first doll was sent to the Emperor of Germany and a few others were sent to various other important people. They first went on sale at the Lenox Lyceum in New York on April 7, 1890. The price of the doll was fairly steep at the time, equal to about two weeks salary for the average person. Apparently it got a lot of attention in the press. The Oroville Mercury stated "Toydom will be revolutionized". They may have been right about that, but they were not accurate on the success of the Edison Talking Doll.

	Edison Talking Doll cylinder reproduction

Unfortunately the dolls were only marketed for a few weeks. Although they had shipped 2,500 dolls, only about 500 were ever sold, and many of those were returned by unhappy customers. Production ended the beginning of May, 1890 and the dolls were withdrawn from the market.

There were many problems with the dolls. The biggest being that the recordings were not terribly good. There was no way to mass-produce the cylinders, so each one had to be recorded individually in wax on the disk. Edison himself commented that “the voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear.” You can hear them yourself at this website.

Because the disks were recorded in wax, they soon wore out. The disks were also not stable and eventually cracked. For this reason, there are none of the originals available today.

Recording the dolls voice

There were also legal problems that may have led to the end of production. Edison had an arrangement with Bell for the wax recording method used in the dolls, but it only applied to dictating machines. He apparently decided to stretch that agreement to cover the dolls, but Bell did not agree and apparently took legal action, possibly stopping the sale of the dolls.

All the returned dolls, along with all the remaining stock had their phonographs removed and were then sold off cheaply. For this reason, most dolls that survive today have no mechanism, or are fitted with a reproduction mechanism. Reproduction disks are also available which incorporate wire mesh in them to eliminate the cracking problem. They sell for about $100.00.

There were other legal problems as well. William W. Jacques actually developed the first prototype for the doll based on Edison’s original tinfoil recording method. Jacques and his partner Lowell Briggs licensed the Edison name and began the Edison Phonography Toy Manufacturing Company in order to produce the dolls. However, Edison soon took over the company even before the dolls were manufactured and demoted the founder, which led to years of lawsuits.

Obviously, for all their faults, it was a milestone in the toy industry. Talking dolls became a standard item and are certainly still popular in various levels of complexity today. A quick search on Amazon for "talking doll" returned 1,650 results. One curious search result is a CD from L. Gonze titled "Ghost Solos" which features the Edison Talking Doll recording of Little Jack Horner".

Continue below for some additional photos!

	Closeup of the talking mechanism

	Edison’s Talking Doll unclothed

	Engraving showing operation

	I talk!

	This ad shows the list of verses available.

When you were a kid (or NOW, if you are a kid), what would you have given to have 1,200 Hot Wheels
Cars racing around a track all at the same time? I know!

Well, Chris Burden, an artist in California has done just that. He’s currently working on Metropolis II, an installation that will appear at the Low Angeles County Museum of Art.

Metropolis I was created in 2004 and was composed of 80 cars. Obviously he upgraded a bit for this new version.

Once completed, the cars will race past a Rube Goldberg "city" made form Erector Sets, Legos, and Lincoln Logs.

I’m sure there’s a serious message behind this artwork, but for our purposes, it’s just way-cool. Hope it comes to the East Coast at some point in the future so I can see it in person.

Via Gizmodo

My favorite warning label

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has released some safety tips to help prevent toy-related injuries this holiday season.

This past year the CPSC has established new toy safety standards that limit lead content to the lowest levels world-wide, limit phthalates, and setting new testing standards. While these standards have been burdensome to small toy manufacturers, they have dramatically reduced toy recalls a quite a bit (there were 44 in 2010, 50 in 2009, and 172 in 2008.

The CPSC’s "three-pronged safety approach" for parents is:

1. Which Toy for Which Child – Always choose age appropriate toys.

2. Gear Up for Safety – Include safety gear whenever shopping for sports-related gifts or ride-on toys, including bicycles, skates, and scooters.

3. Location, Location, Location – Be aware of your child’s surroundings during play. Young children should avoid playing with ride-on toys near automobile traffic, pools or ponds. They also should avoid playing in indoor areas associated with hazards such as kitchens and bathrooms and in rooms with corded window blinds.

Some other safety tips from the CPSC and other sources are:

For children younger than three, avoid toys with any small parts, which can cause choking if eaten. Keep older sibling’s toys away from small children. Small magnets can be particularly dangerous if ingested, because they can connect across the digestive tract causing blockages.

Immediately discard plastic wrap and other packaging material

Batteries should be charged by adults or supervised by adults with older children. Chargers and adapters can get very hot and pose a burn hazard. Also be sure to monitor charging batteries because some charges do not have the ability to prevent overcharging.

Surprisingly, balloons can be particularly dangerous with small children, who can choke or suffocate on deflated or broken pieces. Discard broken balloons immediately.

Toy caps, noisy guns, Big Bang Cannons, and other similar toys can produce noise at levels that can damage hearing. Be sure to read all directions and warnings and use them only outdoors when cautioned.

Toys that propell projectiles can be turned into weapons by children and can cause eye injury.

Check all toys periodically for breakage, wear, or sharp edges that may be dangerous. Check all electric toys for wear and exposed wires. Throw away all damaged toys immediately.

Lastly, look for quality design and construction in all your toy purchases. This is something that Dave’s Cool Toys is all to familiar with (shameless plug). While parents should certainly evaluate all toy purchases for their children, we have spent much time reviewing each toy we sell prior to offering it for purchase to be sure it is well-built and of quality design and manufacture.

For more information on toy safety check out A Parents’ Guide To Selecting Toys For Infants And Toddlers or Toys That Kill
. And for an interesting look at how Safety concerns have changed childen’s toys, take a look at Good Toys, Bad Toys
.