From the Museum of Childhood I picked up a toy called Switch Pitch (video) that transforms before your eyes.
I was very pleased to read on PingMag that inventor Chuck Hoberman creates both consumer toys and large scale transformable environments using the same principles.
Quote from the interview on Ping (written by Verena):
“Despite your work being based […]

Following on from the previous ping pong post…
No space in your house for a games or ping pong table? Then the Ping Pong Door could be for you, turning an existing doorway into an occasional use play space.
Designed by Tobias Fraenzel (originally for a DesignBoom contest) who tells me:
“The PingPong Door is ready to put […]

A while ago I wrote about Plable by Yumiko Tanaka, a project that mixes childs play with social family eating at the dinner table.
Whilst at the graduate show for Goldsmiths University last year I got to play with a wonderful project by Sonal Patel who was at the same time as Yumiko having similair thoughts […]

I’ve had this post in my draft items since October 2006, now slowly finding time to write on Pixelsumo again. In August 2005 I posted ZXZX, a device by Crispin Jones that you cheat the computer at button tapping games, asking “What does it mean to cheat this unseeing opponent?”
Periborg are a series of […]

The Cube was fictional film in 1997 in which people find they are trapped in a giant cube maze. Each cube room has 6 doors that leds to another room. This interactive architecture is full of sensors and actuators (flame throwsers, spikes etc causing considerable pain), and is essentially playing a game with […]

Looking through the site of Hector Serrano from a previous post, I found this collaboration with Lola Llorca…
“Manolo Is Gonna Have Fun takes fun to the extreme with common objects. Objects that combine normal function and are amusing. Manolo´s products are inspired by toys and the actions of playing games. Manolo is gonna have fun […]

Miniorgan.com is a site documenting Erics collection of rare and vintage musical electronic toys. There are 112 in this online library. Aside from the many synthesizers, I find these toys delightful to look at in terms of their intended interaction and the aesthetic.

Tomy Voice Corder (1972)
“BEST MUSICAL TOY OF THE WORLD!!! Play & […]

Following on from my previous posts on alternative perspectives, I am pleased to see the work in progress so far on Animal Superpowers (link 1, link 2) from RCA students Kenichi Okada and Chris Woebken.
“Experimental series of toys as sensory enhancements for kids to experience animal superpowers. Those 5 devices are special tools allowing kids […]

Back in October 2006, I wrote about some new product concepts from Philips (read here). For me the most exciting was Drag & Draw, a digital painting kit that lets children draw on their walls without leaving a mess. A small laser projector in a bucket traces outlines of childrens drawings, tracked by […]

[update] Here is a video by Gaz Cobain showing some of the works. Show open until 5th May 2007.
I’ve been a regular visitor to the Kinetica Museum in London since it’s opening. One of the things I always really liked were the automata donation boxes. For this reason I attended the Cabaret Mechnical Theatre […]

Trunki is the world’s first ride-on suitcase for 3-6 year olds. Invented by Bristol based product designer Rob Law in 1998, now as his company Magmatic Design (founded in 2003), this product is aimed at keeping children happy whilst travelling through airports. Read this interview with Rob on how it started.
Retailing at £25, […]

Following on from my previous post about the work of Semitransparent Design.
This time, they have created an online driving simulator for Honda called Live Drive. A banner campaign on Yahoo! enticed people to the Honda Live Drive site. Once there, you would wait in a queue if it was busy and could speak […]

Last week in London, Philips held an event to preview new potential products ‘that demonstrate its sense and simplicity brand positioning’. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the event, but below are a few products that I find interesting. Many of these follow approaches that I have seen from interaction designers and students […]

Fur, creators of the Painstation and Furminator (among others) have just released information on their project Earworm Assault Devices. From the website:
“Sound is unavoidable (the ear can’t be shut like the eye) and evolutionary hardwired into our cognition apparatus, it can reach into the subconscious and arouse emotions. A well made sound can get stuck […]

[update - a video]
Reporting on the Royal College of Art Show 2006. Read more on Pixelsumo.

Availabot by Jack Schulze (Interaction Design) plugs into your computer by USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away. It’s a presence-aware, peripheral-vision USB toy and because the puppets are made […]

Reporting on the Royal College of Art Show 2006. Read more on Pixelsumo.

The Sprochs from Daniel Goddemeyer (Interaction Design) are a family of characters that allow you to record a single voice message, then pass it on to someone else. Upon recording your message, you can set the level of effort and care from […]

Reporting on the Royal College of Art Show 2006. Read more on Pixelsumo.

I had previously written about Plable from Yumiko Tanaka, so I was pleased to see a working prototype at the Interaction Design show.
Yumiko’s other projects include Fripon (connect kitchen appliances and furniture wirelessly to control childrens toys) and Spyrod (a small video camera […]

Reporting on the Royal College of Art Show 2006. Read more on Pixelsumo.
Daniel Goddemeyer from Interaction Design has created these three dolls for children with a purpose.

Smoke is a doll whose physical breathing behaviour is depending on the parents smoking habits and how much the doll is exposed to passive smoke at home. Smoke’s […]

Last week the excellent Music Thing posted details about a new range of toys, licensed by the Blue Man Group and developed by ToyQuest.

Aimed at 8-14 year olds, these toys will kind of emulate the instruments used by the Blue Man Group in their stage show. The Percussion Tubes (shown top) will use distance […]

Following on from my earlier toy car post.
Alexandre Armand and Bram Dauw met on the Media & Interaction Design course at the Art University of Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. After working together on projects & in workshops, they formed Francobelge Design.

Commotion (above) is a new form of play over a scalectrix style racing toy. […]

My reason for irregular postings on Pixelsumo has been due to curating and coordinating the Cybersonica 06 Sonic Art exhibition. After a huge amount of work by the team, I can now happily say that the exhibition is now open and we have 12 truly great pieces installed in the gallery space. I […]

Sketch & Share by Robert Faludi, John Schimmel & Grace Kim is a collaborative sketch pad toys for sharing drawings and sounds over distance. Developed as part of the networked objects & toy design class at ITP. User scenario:
Children turn on the toy and begin pressing lit buttons to create patterns. Each button press […]

Following on from my previous toy post, here are some interesting ideas around childrens toy cars. A sign of innovation in toy design coming from interaction designers is Mattel linking up with courses at Royal College of Art and Interaction Ivrea (among others).

Hotcam by Theo Humphries (then at Royal College of Art), is a […]

From an interactive design perspective, toys for adults and children fascinate me. From looking at interaction models, encouraging collaboration, creativity and exploration, I think these fields can learn a lot from each other. So you’ll start to see a little more focus on toy design on Pixelsumo, toys that take a different approach or […]

Soundgarten by Michael Wolf is a tangible interface that enables children to record, modify and arrange sound samples in a playful way. Designed as a toy, the garden has 19 plug holes that can fit sounds in the form of mushroom objects. Children can use the pre-defined environmental or musical sounds, or use […]

[update] a video is now online.

RGB Player by Toke Barter, is a cylinder-shaped musical instrument with a built in scanner and a mounted rotating disc. The ‘instrument’ is played by placing coloured objects (childrens toys) onto the surface of the rotating glass disc.

As an object passes over the scanner beneath the disc and its […]

Reminiscent of the Blockjam interface, TileToy is a modular electronic game by Tuomo Tammenpää and Daniel Blackburn. Currently in prototype form, I can imagine some pretty innovative games where you have a series of Tiles that you have to link up in different ways to play the game.