Combining all of the coolest and favorite toy elements from my epic youth into one giant fun-ball would still fall short (just barely though) of the potential that Mantzel’s robot has for thrills.
Watch out before turning the corner at the kitchen door. A robot could be scuttling by along the floor aiming to fire ping pong balls, while his partner traverses the living room couch in hopes of shooting a foam dart at any transgressor.
With the amazing evolution of modern robotics in the twenty first century, inventor Jaimie Mantzel has magnanimously offered up an innovative new radio controlled toy robot – that’s right, toy – for kids of all ages (and that includes me, folks).
This thing does not even have a name yet, though the toy company Wow! Stuff has signed on to distribute these, once the prototypes are tweaked to perfection, and they are currently holding a contest to attribute a name to these six-legged bots.
Manztel’s radio controlled robots each have six legs, walk creepily like enlarged bug bots, and have futuristic looking color schemes in their bodies and the various attachable armor pieces and weapons accessories that they can easily be outfitted with.
This is reminiscent of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Thrower, which comes to my mind happily, as it was made for the action figures to fire discs at one another. My friends and I used to fight each other with them, but if we had had our hands on radio controls to direct the Throwers to walk on their own to find and eliminate toy enemies like Mantzer’s, then we might not have attacked each other in the flesh.
Now, the Mantzel toy robot can be fit with a small disc throwing attachment too, though the design is to hit competitor bug bots, disarming both their G.I. J.O.E.-like armor and their legs. The inventor hopes to work in a light function to indicate when a hit has been made and possibly a kill switch, so that a robot taking three hits to the body would shut down, signaling defeat.
No one knows the price, or when these will be available, but they look like they will be fun that is not worth missing.
[via Gizmag]
