10 cool tech toys coming in 2015
From talking Barbies, dinos and robots to toys that let kids create their own video games and music, this year's new tech toys cozy up to your kids and encourage them to express themselves.
Many toy companies use last week's American International Toy Fair in New York City to offer a sneak peek at the tech toys being released in 2015. Barbie will be having real conversations with your daughters. And budding engineers can use toy tiles to design video games. Here are 10 tech toys worth watching.
Hello Barbie
Girls have always loved imaginative play with Barbie, but starting this fall, they will now be able to talk to their doll. Using a conversational system developed by ToyTalk, this new Barbie can chat, tell jokes, play interactive games, and listen and learn girls' likes and dislikes. The doll adapts over time, and uses what it learns about its owner in future conversations. After being set up with an iOS or Android smart device, Hello Barbie works over a Wi-Fi connection.
Coming late fall from Mattel, for ages 6+, $74.99, www.Barbie.com
Bonus Tip: ToyTalk, the company behind Barbie's new chatty personality, has several exciting conversational apps for kids in iTunes. Click here to learn more about the Winston Show and SpeakorTreat.
Compose Yourself
With this revolutionary musical cards and website combo, any child can compose music. Invented by Phillip Sheppard, a world-famous composer and cellist, the 60 transparent cards each contain the musical notation for a musical riff. Kids arrange the cards in any order and then enter the card codes into the web site to hear their composition played by a full symphony orchestra. By flipping and rotating the cards, kids can create over 200 million possible musical combinations.
Coming in April from Thinkfun, for ages 6-up, $14.99, www.thinkfun.com
Tiggly Words
This toy/app combo puts five toy vowel letters into kids' hands to use with three free apps that teach reading. Kids will explore word construction, word families, spelling and rhyming in apps with fun themes about playing doctor, writing plays and exploring the ocean. The toys interact with tablets (iOS and Android) whenever the child places a vowel on the screen, making these reading games hands-on.
Coming in May from Tiggly, for ages 4-8, $29.95, www.Tiggly.com
Bonus Tip: If you don't want to wait until May, the existing Tiggly toy/app combinations are also excellent. Click here to read my review of Tiggly Counts.
CogniToys
This talking smart toy takes the shape of a cute, soft rubber dinosaur. It is one brainy beast, as it is powered by the cognitive computing system IBM Watson. Using full speech recognition, CogniToys can talk to kids on a variety of topics when they ask "who," "why," "where" and "when" questions. The cute dino can tell jokes, engage kids in Mad Libs-like stories and remember things about the child, such as a favorite color. Using an app (iOS or Android), the toy connects to the Internet and thereafter simply needs Wi-Fi to operate.
Coming in November from Elemental Path, for ages 4-7, $99.99, www.elementalpath.com
Roominate
Roominate, a start-up that received funding from Mark Cuban on the TV show "Shark Tank," makes building systems for girls that includes circuits (to make things move), modular pieces and universal joints. With six new products in 2015, the standout is the Roominate rPower ($19.99), an add-on Bluetooth hub that allows girls to program the building sets' electronics by using the phone or tablet. After downloading the free app on IOS or Android, girls use their devices to regulate the motors, lights, buzzers and other gizmos that they have built into their designs. The new Roominate kits with rPower connectivity include Amusement Park ($49.99), School ($49.99), Townhouse ($39.99), RV ($29.99) and School Bus ($29.99); but rPower will also work with the older girl-builder kits.
Coming this summer from Roominate, for ages 6+, $19.99-$49.99, www.RoominateToy.com
Bonus Tip: For more information on how the current Roominate kits work, click here.
Moff Band
Moff Band is a wearable tech toy that enhances imaginative play with sound. The toy looks like a watch on top of a slap bracelet. Once synced to the free Moff iOS app, the device works to deliver sound in real time matching the child's arm movement. Depending on the sound they selected in the app, kids can move their arms to rock out playing an air guitar, cast magical spells or create the clickety-clack of a train speeding down a track. It's pure whimsy and fun, and it turns anything you pick up into a noise maker.
Out now from Moff Inc, for ages 3-12, $54.99, www.moff.mobi
Bloxels
This tech toy combines three of kids' favorites: toy blocks, apps and video games. Kids place colored cubes onto a gridded Bloxels' game board to design their own unique video game. Next they open a free app to scan the block design with their iOS or Android smart device. The game automatically appears on the mobile device to let kids refine their design and then play their game. This nifty blocks-to-video-game toy makes designing a video game a hands-on experience. The toy set comes with the game board, 200 colored blocks and one guide book.
Coming this holiday season from Pixel Press, for ages 6+, $49.99, www.BloxelsBuilder.com
Bonus Tip: Don't want to wait? Pixel Press partnered with Cartoon Network to create an app where kids design video games from within an app or by scanning a design drawn on graph paper. Click here to read more about Adventure Time Game Wizard app from this same developer.
Crayola Color Alive Easy Animation Studio
With this coloring system that ties into an app, kids can not only color a character, but they can animate it, too. The system comes with a design book offering 10 characters and five backgrounds to color, colored pencils and a small mannequin that kids can pose. After kids color a character, they open the free app (iOS, Android or Windows) to take a photo of their drawing and then have the camera take pictures of the mannequin in different poses. The app uses Smooth Action Technology to bring the colored character up off the page and have it move based on the mannequin's poses that were photographed. Kids see their creation on the screen through the device's camera and watch as it magically comes to life in 4D to animate as they desired.
Coming in July from Crayola, for ages 6+, $24.99, www.Crayola.com
Puzzlets
This toy/app combination teaches kids how to program by letting them plan out their code using plastic command tiles placed on a Play Tray. The Play Tray wirelessly connects to either iOS or Android devices or a Mac or PC to interact with a puzzle game called "Cork the Volcano." The game has 120 levels that teach kids how to use the tiles (move right, move left, jump, etc.) to move characters throughout progressively more complicated environments. With cute characters and an exciting goal of saving an island from an evil force, this toy is a great way to introduce children to coding and logical thinking.
Coming in September from Digital Dream Labs, for ages 6-10, $99.99, www.digitaldreamlabs.com
Trobo
Kids cuddle up with Trobo, an app-connected plush robot, to hear STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) stories. This storytelling robot, which can be ordered as female Curie or male Newton, stars in the five interactive stories found in a free iOS app. To make the learning experience personal, children put themselves in the stories as well as using an avatar builder. The stories come from crowd-sourced contests and cover bees, gravity, lightning, telling time and money.
Coming in July from Trobo, for ages 2-5, $59.99, www.mytrobo.com
Bonus Tip: If you are looking for tech toys that your kids can play now, click here for my list of the Top Tech Toys for Kids.
Jinny Gudmundsen is the Editor of www.TechwithKids.com and author of iPad Apps for Kids, a For Dummies book. Contact her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her @JinnyGudmundsen.