Beanie Babies 2.0

Beanie Babies, one of the major fads of the late 1990s...I used to be a part of that fad for a couple of months as a kid. Somehow I ended up giving up the ones I owned. I don't really remember what actually happened to them. About a year or two ago, my mom decided to get into beanie babies after she started to help my girlfriend buy some one day. So, we went down the dark path of collecting many of them for my mom. Luckily, most of them were pretty cheap because the fad has been dead so long. A lot of people want to get rid of their beanie baby collection, which makes it pretty cheap. You can buy a lot of them for a dollar a piece at flea markets.

This review below is based on the web site before the April 3rd update
The original beanie baby line came to an end at the end of December 2007. Ty, the producers and creators of beanie babies, decided to relaunch their legendary toy line. To compete against Webkinz, Ty created Beanie Babies 2.0. This new line of beanie babies offer similar, but higher quality beanie babies along with a secret code for an online flash game world web site. This site offers a 2D cartoony virtual world with games and chat rooms. The competition, Webkinz has had many years to develop and create their own hot selling brand with their own web site. From my quick research, Webkinz pretty much ripped off the Neopets game system. Unfortunately, Beanie Babies 2.0 virtual world doesn't even compare at all that Webkinz and Neopets offer in gameplay, features, and content. It's still extremely early, but it's very worrisome.

So far, the 2.0 system is very bare. There are many different flash games you can play, items that you receive from playing those games, and chat rooms, but that's about it. They hint towards some type of adventure game, but it's no where to be found at the moment. You can also max out your current stats of beanies, friends, hunger, and games played to unlock some type of item with no known purpose. So, to sum up the Beanie Babies 2.0 virtual world is simply that its an interface to play and unlock a collection of short flash games, a collection of limited graphical chat rooms, and a small collecting element. Each beanie unlocks their own personal room, however these rooms are featureless except holding your mouse over a couple of items that contains different animations. One could hope that since the site was recently launched in January 08, that Ty will push for the game system to be greatly improved and added to. I know they have fixed many bugs, but the engine still has glitches and slows down. Either way, if Ty expects to compete, the game engine has to be serevely upgraded with a lot more features than what they have right now.

I just completed an overview of the whole system. I realize now more than ever that the system is really still in beta. It's ultimately incomplete and still broken. There are locked chat rooms and games that can only be opened with a key. They give you this key, but you have to use it every single time to open any of them. However, based on what they say, there are meant to be unique keys to open selected areas. This concept doesn't work yet. You can also bypass some of those locks through a shortcut menu. I also maxed out my stats and was given a watering can. I have no idea what to use it for. The stats are still maxed out too. So, I'm basically at dead end for now. This looks pretty bad for Ty. That's for sure. However, I believe that the system holds a lot of promise if they keep developing it. I do really like the graphics and feel of the whole thing. If they could just upgrade it with a lot more, it'll be something special.

Roboquad

Roboquad by WowWee Robotics
Retail Price: $89.99
Ages: 8+

I bought the Roboquad about two months ago or so. I was in the mood to get some kind of neat robotic device. Something that would be fun and actually work. I got him on clearance for about 50 bucks. If you don't know, the WowWee's robots have always been advertised as the main entertainment robots for average households costing under 200 bucks. I used to want the original Robosapien, but convinced myself to forget about it years ago. At that time it was a hundred dollars. They still sell him for only 50 bucks at Target nowadays though. Anyhow, looking through the selection of machines on WowWee's web site, I decided for the Roboquad. He's a four-legged crab-like robot with a cool head. I liked the novelty of his appearance. Roboquad didn't turn out to be very popular, but WowWee's machines seem to go that way. They end up getting discontinued. Robosapien is their most popular and last longing robot. I believe most of the other ones are built as mere companions to interact with him and have a limited shelf life. I think Roboquad ends up being that way too. He holds a lot more promise of what he should be able to do as an awesome robot pet, but come up short and limited.

WowWee's robots are a cross between remote control toys and automatic machines that can roam and pretend to figure out their environments. Sadly, Roboquad is more the first. He does have automatic settings to let him that roam around and explore. He does do a good job at trying to figure out his environment and avoid obvious road blocks if he can see them (like big boxes and walls). However, all he can really do is walk around, change directions, and avoid stuff. He works fine on the carpet surprisingly, but make sure he has fresh batteries. However, of course the commercials make him look far more self-aware and automatic than he truly is. The biggest problem is that his automatic mode is limited and short. He may only explore for a couple of minutes before stopping and he gives up if he gets stuck for too long.

Roboquad has 72 pre-programmed functions such as different movements, speeds, and automatic settings. Like most of WowWee's machines, he's programmable up to 40 different moves. Roboquad has different personalities which are reflected in his automatic mode. He acts differently at night and in dim light. He is a novelty toy really, but I still like him. You can spend a good 10 minutes enjoying his charm. Roboquad holds a lot of promise, but is limited. I look forward to seeing a Roboquad II that improves on his Artificial Intelligence and make him a more full feature pet. There's no announcements for a new one at this moment sadly. I would like to have a bot that would roam around the house, learn his environments, and have some games to him. A real 24/7 machine would be awesome. Sony's old AIBO dog was meant to be like that, but he costed 2,000 bucks back when. The future of home robots are still in an extreme early stage between serious robotic computers and cheap toys.

Roboquad is a cool novelty to own, but could be far more promising than he ends up being. I'm still happy I own him and it's still enjoyable to spend time with him every so often. I continue to enjoy his appearance even in sleep mode. It's enjoyable to watch him roam around or command him for a bit. I don't own any robots like him, so his charm continues to be special. I wouldn't recommend him to anyone unless he was pretty cheap and if you don't mind novelty items that don't provide a lot of entertainment value.

Check out the videos here: http://roboquadonline.com/watch.html