Play smart and sell smart: “Toys with minds”

Making inroad into modern toys

Since the beginning of history, playthings often needed players’ imagination and one-directional input to make the games fun. However, the table has turned in the latter half of the 20th century, when advancement in micro-electronics gave birth to a new generation of toys - also known as the “Intelligent toys”, or “Smart toys”. With the capability to “learn” and “react”. 

What constitutes “Intelligent toys” or “Smart toys”? The definition varies among academics, toys designers, and even among IT giants. Despite the varied definitions, the emergence of “Intelligent toys” can be seen as a natural development of an increasingly digitised world, which has also pervasively changed the way the younger generation gets to play and entertain.

Digitisation of playthings

In the 1950s, the California-based integrated-circuit (IC) manufacturer Fairchild Semiconductor led a revolution in electronics by launching the first-generation integrated-circuits, which succeeded in “compressing” the size and functionalities of a bunch of traditional vacuum tubes into a tiny circuit board. It marked the dawn of a new era of electronic appliances, such as small radios and televisions.

In the realm of toys industry, the minimisation of electronic components has also facilitated the development of “smart toys”. The “Slot Cars” started to proliferate among kids in the US and UK . Being one of the first truly electronic toys in history, the “slot car” was equipped with a remote control unit and wireless power transfer, which were both ground-breaking designs at the time.  

In subsequent years, the perfection of micro-processing technologies made available low-voltage mini processors that could embed simple instructions. Although these processors were usually in the 8-bit range, only capable of storing and executing a few lines of instructions, they did form the hardcore of all “Intelligent toys” to come.

Such advancement in processing capabilities contributed to another important breakthrough later-The embedding of simple programming and controlling capabilities into traditional toys.

In 1998, Danish toys maker Lego performed new magic on their traditional plastic bricks: The launch of “Mindstorm”. Combining the “RCX Brick”, a central unit with an embedded microprocessor, along with more than 700 pieces of motors, gears and bricks, players could construct their own robots or “moving” toys, and program them with specialised software tools from their personal computers.

With its tremendous flexibility and ample room for players’ imagination, even adults with a professional engineering background are fascinated by its charm. Some of them even developed specialised operating environments for the “Mindstorm”: The “LegoOS” and Java (A programming language)-based “TinyVM”. Such popularity had pushed the sales of “Mindstorm” up by a staggering 300 per cent in 1999, merely a year after its release.

Aibo: The “e-dog” that leads the way

In 1999, Sony’s “Aibo”- the “e-dog” that claimed to be a perfect replication of a real-world pet dog, brought the development of smart toys to a new height. It was an electronic “dog” that could fully replicate the actions, emotions and reactions of a real pet dog, Sony’s development team began their works as early as 1993. In the autumn of 1997, the first trial unit was released for beta testing. In June 1999, the first model of Aibo was launched concurrently in Asia , Europe and the Americas and made a smash hit.

Aibo was truly a milestone in the evolution of intelligent toys. It was designed and programmed to react to visual and audio stimulations, as well as feelings being “triggered”. A player can touch, give orders to, and play with Aibo just like the way with a real dog. Victor Matsuda, vice president of ERA Company, which handled the design of the controlling software for Aido, said, “The latest version(of Aibo) is a result of significant evolutionary advancements in robotic hardware and software, as well as our analysis of what people want most in entertainment robots.”

In fact, Aibo has been widely hailed as the ideal top model of “smart toys”: toys that can react, learn, and be emotional.

What make toys intelligent?

Drawing from the developmental history of smart toys, one can see that in order for a toy to be “smart”, it must embrace the following features:

1. Sensory inputs---There must be some kinds of sensory input devices that allow players to feed in commands either by audio or visual means, or by touch-and-feel.

2. Integrated processors---Every “smart toy” carries with itself a “brain”, usually in the form of an integrated-circuit chip or a micro low-voltage processor with embedded program commands that react either to users’ inputs or some other stimulating actions.

3. Multi-purpose and functions---For a toy to be “smart”, it will not serve only one function. A “smart toy” should be able to react to a wide repertoire of the player’s random actions, and can expand game-play experiences significantly.

Rules of the smart games

Toy manufacturers are now developing their own brands of “smart toys” in various ways. Their attempts can be roughly categorized into the following approaches: 1. the “Refining” approach, with the manufacturers adding “intelligence” to traditional toys, like dolls; the “New Breed” approach, by which toy developers conceptualise totally new toy categories built upon micro-electronic components; and 3. the “Software” approach, in which traditional games are “computerized” to play on desktop or other PC options. 

  1. Refining approach

With the advent of microelectronics, toy makers could vitalise the traditional toys with tiny “minds”. Some of the best examples in this area have been dolls which could stimulate a series of life-like reactions.

In 1998, Hasbro introduced the “Furby”, a nightingale-like doll that broke all previous toys sales record with more than 12 million units sold worldwide. Each Furby was allegedly equipped with a microprocessor that exceeded the Apollo 18 moon landing-craft’s CPU capacity. Hasbro even created a specialised language, the Furbish, for the dolls!

Two years later, Hasbro partnered with iRobot Corporation to develop the “My Real Baby” series. It was described as “the most real, dynamic, life-like baby dolls available for young girls to take care of and nurture.” The baby was designed to be able to “grow” over time with its own unique personality to evolve from interactions with its “owner”..

The refining principle had proved to be a good-sell for Hasbro. In the years that followed, the attractiveness of having interaction with dolls was still going strong. Aibo and others can be seen as an ongoing testimony to this trend.

2. New Breed approach

Other than refining traditional lines by adding digitized features, the advancement of information technology also led to the creation of brand new toys.

In recent years, two unlikely participants in the toy industry -- renowned CPU-maker Intel Corporation and Microsoft, the company which controls 90 per cent of the world’s desktops, have been working with the toy industry to develop special OSs and software platforms for developing new toys. Their efforts have contributed to a whole series of new toys which were simply unheard of before.

Among these “New Breeds”, Fisher Price’s Intelli-table, launched in 2000, was a good example of how technology helped breed a new toy model.

Targeting toddlers aged 9 months or above, Intelli-table was said to be able to “ thoughtfully integrate interactive technology into toddler and preschooler play patterns. That is, to ensure that the technology truly provided a stimulus for inspiring a child to want to learn more”, in the words of Fisher Price’s press release during its launching in 2000. The company claimed that Intelli-table would allow children to learn numbers, alphabets and shapes by playing with the embedded rings on the table, which are actually individual mini-games. Behind its bright red-shell, Microsoft-powered programming technologies handle the sophisticated coordination of games between turns--An unprecedented design in pre-school toys. 

3. Software approach

Other than making new twists in the real world, toys makers are now exploring the possibility of moving their games into the virtual world - Making “soft copies” of the popular board games or other traditional games for playing on PCs.

For example, the game of “Monopoly”, a hugely successful board game on real estate buy-and-sell, has already become the quick model for over several hundreds other computer game titles worldwide. Infogames Entertainment, an American gaming software developer, had developed a series of new cyber-version of “Monopoly” games based on the original design.

Looking forward: Smart toys to reign

As seen from the development history of toys, the advancement of electronic and information technologies has indeed created a whole new generation of toys that are getting “smarter and smarter”. To cater for the ever-growing demand for “smart toys”, toy manufacturers worldwide must stay smart to consider upgrading their technology base and strategically incorporate the upcoming electronic advancements in their next product project.