Leave it to the Japanese to give us a voice controlled toy that makes you use an accent to control. Given my previous experience using voice recognition technology, I’m not so sure about this toy…

My last brush with voice recognition was the game “rainbow six: vegas”. For those of you who don’t know what the heck that is, it’s a tactical shooting game, where you have to take out a bunch of terrorists in Las Vegas. It has a voice recognition, meaning you can yell into your microphone and your guys will try to do what you tell them to… up to a point. You can say things like “wait here”, “go there” ,”follow me”, “stay”,etc… Sadly, you can say something that isn’t in the list of available options, and it will try to do something anyway. Apparently, “Oh Sh–!” means “go over there and get shot”. Let’s just say that it was easier to forget about the voice controls and stick with the good ol’ push button action.

I assume it isn’t going to be any easier with this toy, especially considering the commands:

To start up the engines, say “engine staato”, to shut the engines off, it’s “toe-mah-reh”. To go up, you say “appu”, but to fly down, you still say “down”. Go figure. You can always just hover by saying “holdo”.

taiyo voice-heli: voice control helicopter from japan [appu, appu and away] [technabob]

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There was a time when I was trying to find a remote controlled helicopter that had a ring around the blades like these Star Wars toys that have yet to be released. I’m not too crazy about these because of the Star Wars aspect; I’m just not that crazy about the franchise. I never understood the people who would go all out for a Star Wars convention, renting out luxury hotel rooms for their after parties, etc… Wait… there are Star Wars conventions, right? Or is it Star Trek? Oy!

well, the point is, I went to a hobby shop in search of a small R/C copter like this, because I saw this video of a cat killing one such R/C toy, and I thought it would be fun for everyone involved. The guy who worked there didn’t feel the same way… in fact, he told me that he wouldn’t sell me an R/C copter at all because he thought it would hurt the cat. I never did get that copter.

Hasbro’s Flying Star Wars Vehicles [OhGizmo!]

SnelFlight brought some interesting toys to the Toy Fair in 2008- The jumpjet, pictured here, is like a helicopter/airplane hybrid that can hover in place, land in the palm of your hand, and swoop around like an airplane. The remote looks suspiciously like an xbox controller, but this could just be a preproduction release.

What I’m really interested in is the UFO-like contraption that appears in the video below at about the 2:20 mark. Not only does it make me want to film an incredibly low budget movie about an alien invasion, but it looks like a mighty fine cat toy as well… maybe I could make an incredibly low budget movie about a giant cat that saves the world from alien invasion? I think I’ll name it Catzilla!

Source: GeekAlerts.com