Plush Toy Turns Your iPad into Your Child’s Best Friend—As If It Wasn’t Already
Meet Ubooly. She’s a stuffed animal with an iPad mini stuffed inside, and she really wants to be your child’s new best friend. With the tablet powering Ubooly, the pudgy, fox-like creature will chat with your young one, teach him educational lessons and play games through the magic of speech recognition software.
Without the tablet, the little plush is a faceless shell of a creature, but once you’ve installed the proper app on your Apple device, unzipped the furry creature’s head and slipped the slate inside, it comes to life.
(All right, I admit, I made it a little more like a horror movie than it needs to be.)
Ubooly comes packed with all sorts of lessons disguised as games, teaching kids new languages, lessons about science and the like. Parents pick the specific lesson plan with Ubooly Lab, a customization service for the toy. The app itself is free, but specific lesson packs run $3 apiece.
Children learn from Ubooly, and Ubooly learns from children. Using built-in voice recognition software, the little smart-plush will learn its playmate’s name, favorite color and more. And then the adventures begin, running kids through science experiments and taking them on imaginary cave adventures before bed.
The real smarts of the creature is in the design. With Ubooly, the company has managed to create a rugged smart-device case that strays from the rubber bumpers of products like the VINCI tablet. You’ll still want to be mindful of the tablet inside, though — Ubooly’s face is something of a weak spot.
There are few things more compelling to small children (and the rest of us, for that matter) than little glowing smart devices. If you’ve got little ones, your smartphones and tablets are going to wind up in their tiny, clumsy fingers sooner or later, so why not add a little furry protection and maybe help them learn something in the process?
The new iPad mini/Nexus 7 Jumbo version of Ubooly runs $60 (tablet sold separately). You can also get a smaller smartphone-compatible version for half that. Ultimately, though, if the Ubooly really does its job, you’re going to have a tough time getting your device back. Your kid’s new fuzzy fox pal may be a much bigger investment, after all.
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