Category: Cool Toys

Live in a rat-infested fleabag of an apartment? Well even if you don’t, you can still scare the beejezus out of your roommates with your very own remote-controlled rat. With its light-up red eyeballs, I wouldn’t necessarily call this rat-on-wheels “lifelike”.

You probably know by now that young Spartans proved their worth by being beaten up senseless and killing – or being killed by – comically large wolves. We modern men are not as barbaric; we’re content with having our babies ride cyclops-head strollers.

For those who are not into World of Warcraft, Frostmourne is the sword held by the evil being called the Lich King, leader of one of the undead factions in the MMORPG. How powerful is this sword?

Ben Heck has put up his retro-futuristic creation, the Commodore 64 laptop, for auction. The proceeds will go to “a worthy charity”.  The winning bidder also gets an SD card – the laptop is equipped with both an SD card slot and a cartridge slot – and a DVD of Possomus Woman, a film written and directed by the master modician himself.

Move over, Project Natal and Wii-mote: here comes Sony, trying to break into the let’s-make-it-real movement with a new patent for image-scanning with their EyeToy camera. Oh, did you think I meant their oddly-shaped wand controller from E3?

One of the more valid complaints against playing video games is that it sometimes makes us forget how fun it is to play outdoors, or interact with other people directly, not in front of a monitor or TV.

You know what’s awesome about portable game systems? Portability, of course! And what’s awesome about arcade cabinets? Everything. So it’s clear that arcade cabinets are, in fact, better than portables… which means it’s totally okay to hack your portables into your arcade cabinets.

Love Electroplankton? You’re not alone; the interactive music experience has a devoted following, and they’re all about to be made very happy… if they’re in Japan. Nintendo’s home base is about to be treated to ten different Electroplankton apps on the DSiWare service.

How do you make a disgusting alien cute? Easy: just replace his slimy skin with wool. Oh and give him a “squezzly bunnybear.” Flickr pro/proud mom/Jedi Grand Needle Felter Kit Lane imagined that as a child, Zorba’s offspring wasn’t really an evil Hutt.

How’d you like to wake up to a Sith Lord staring you down in the middle of the night? This Darth Vader alarm clock/radio from Sakar is sure to scare the crap out of you if you happen to roll over at 3am and stare into his glowing red LED eyeballs.

Someday, people are going to learn not to mess with the dangerous technology. You’re not supposed to build an AI! Haven’t the movies taught you people anything? Apparently not, since some guy has gone and built himself a transforming robot.

I apologize to anyone who has seen Revenge of the Fallen and liked it, but personally I think I got ripped off on that one. My sentiments – and then some – have been represented elsewhere, so I’ll just leave it at that.

The Super Nintendo has been the target of some really sweet mods in its time, and this latest portable fits right into that pantheon of excellent mods. Marshall’s Supertendo looks so good that you’d swear it was professionally made.

There aren’t as many video game apps for the Mac as there are for Windows computers, and even then I have a feeling that there’s no program, Windows or otherwise, that lets you play and play with retro video games the way OpenEmu does.

If you use Twitter, odds are you occasionally inform your poor followers of some business that just really doesn’t matter. (How’s your sandwich, by the way?) Why not keep them updated on something that might actually matter, like your heart rate?

The quest to keep people indoors and separated from each other continues with the mydeskfriend robot toy penguin. The web-connected mydeskfriend will be able to connect to your Facebook account and read your messages and your feeds, in a robotic voice I assume.