These toys interact with your smartphone to engage your kids

Toys aren’t just for fun anymore!

These days’ toys aren’t just Barbie dolls and Hot Wheel cars; they have become a new source of learning aids for kids. Have you seen the latest craze around ‘Lego blocks’?

If you step into any of the toy stores in the country, you will surely be baffled with the endless rows of toys, an enormous product range and numerous brands, all under the same roof. This is evident from the huge demand by the target group that is creating a great momentum and expected growth for the sector in the near future.

Spending on toys has increased by many folds by double income families, and it’s a global trend now to buy toys that have a learning element in them.

When I was in Israel a few weeks ago for the DLD Conference, I was happy to meet this amazing team from ChatPetz that is working on tech toys for kids. ChatPetz is a very loveable interactive toy that responds to ultrasonic beeps that can be triggered by almost any device, including TVs, computers, phones and tablets. ChatPetz can be used alongside a mobile app creating an engaging and incredibly fun experience in which ChatPetz directly responds to the content of the app. ChatPetz are furry and huggable high tech toys that interact with all manners of technology in their surroundings.

The husband-wife duo of IIan and Michal Laor have an earlier experience of building a toy company, JoJo, having sold over 200 million units worldwide. They have recorded close to USD $60 million in sales with their previous toy venture. This experience would come in handy while scaling ChatPetz globally with a good pace.

ChatPetz can also communicate with each other and hold conversations or have sing-a-longs each in their own voice and personality. They are part of a new generation of ultra high-tech toys that leverage the amazing capabilities of modern connected devices such as smartphones. The ChatPetz are amazingly easy to use. They are designed to come to life straight out of the box and include a USB cable to connect to your computer to quickly add new behaviors from the online database.

The team has now unveiled a new Indiegogo campaign to develop an online platform to create content for the toys. The toy provides a never-ending experience of fun, magic, and education for children and the young at heart; and thanks to an easy-to-use online platform, anyone will be able to create personalized content that their ChatPetz can interact with.

While the ChatPetz can respond to any content, the company is focusing on educational material that will transform learning into an interactive experience of play. In addition, they can respond to almost any form of media; from a TV commercial to a YouTube video, creating practically limitless possibilities of fun and interactivity.

In order to ensure a vast world of content, ChatPetz is developing an online platform that will allow individual owners to create content for their own ChatPetz. The platform is designed to be accessible by anyone, using simple commands in place of complex codes or scripts. This means the platform will be accessible to parents, teachers, or anyone else looking to provide a rich and fun experience. The content will be accessible in an App Store environment, and all content will be checked and moderated ensuring it is completely safe and appropriate for children.

Creating good engaging content endlessly is a big problem for content creators globally. This is one of the prime reasons why the ChatPetz team is crowdsourcing content from their users. It’s a good initiative to turn regular owners into content creators and have a network to engage other users on the platform.

The ChatPetz team believes that their toys will help children have fun and learn at the same time, as well as involve parents in this cheerful process too.

Do you believe that the toy industry is globally undergoing disruption? If you believe in that ChatPetz is doing then go check their Indiegogo campaign here.