Digging In To The Toy Chest At CES 2020
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) took place in Las Vegas last week and while the majority of news coming out of the world’s largest tech gathering is focused on toilet paper delivering robots and Impossible Pork, we are excited to see some innovative technology in the kid space.
We are especially interested in the new generation of toys that combine physical play with digital experiences. This is not new technology, but many companies at CES this year have found interesting new ways to make the integration between digital and physical more natural and intuitive.
According to Weird Magazine, “One welcome trend we've seen here at CES is a return of tactile toys. Every app-driving toy we saw had some real-world way you could interact with it. This mirrors the rise of AR (augmented reality) more broadly, but it may also mark a change in the way toy and app makers approach screen time with little ones.”
Here are some of our favorite toys from CES 2020:
These familiar wooden numbers, letters and shapes from Marbotic hide a nifty secret. They can pair with your iPad to be used in a number of educational games and software including apps from Sesame Street.
When I was a kid, Teddy Ruxpin was the closest I ever got to seeing a toy come to life. These new stuffed animals from Thinker-Tinker take that idea to a whole new level. Parents slide a tablet into the stuffed octopus and an integrated app gives your child’s fluffy new best bud a real personality. Thinker Tinker calls the Octobot, “A Learning Robot You Can Cuddle”. I just want one to be my friend.
The new Light Saber Academy Battle system doesn’t require a VR head set or a computer or a video game system. All you need is the Lightsaber and an iPad and you are ready to begin your Jedi training. We haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like the most seamless integration of toy and tech that we have seen in the Star Wars universe.
Tacto from STEM toy maker Shifu, combines the face-to-face fun of a board game with the digital game-play of a video game in what appears to be a seamless integration of physical game pieces and a digital game board. The games focus on STEM based education but offer loads of variety and interactivity.
tori is what I always wanted games like Skylanders and LEGO Dimensions to be. Those earlier games included collectible toys that unlocked characters and items in them game. tori has reimagined this experience and created a new system that allows kids to use their toys to control the game play as well. Holding a tori toy over the Mirror Play mat magically brings that toy to life on your iPad screen. Magnets inside the toy are read by the mat, turning the toy into a game controller. For even more creative play kids can build and decorate their own toys.
Perhaps the best example of the importance of physical play at this year’s CES was found at the Google experience. After researching the importance of play for our blog entry last year, we were happy to see a long line of executives and tech journalists lined up every day to take a ride down one of Google’s colorful slides. Even at a conference focused on the future of innovation, good old-fashioned goofing off had its place.