Toys

You don’t have a game room at your house, and your spouse won’t let you replace the dining table with a foosball table.  What to do?  Well, you could buy the Kartoni Foosball Table.  It’s made of cardboard with sustainable wood rods; it needs assembly, but you won’t need tools, glue, or screws.  The Kartoni […]

If you like kitschy in the kitchen, these salt and pepper shakers will fit right in.  These are actual wind-up robots that can walk themselves over to the diners needing some seasoning for their food.  They’re made of food-grade plastics, so you’ll have no worries using them on your table.  The Salt and Pepper Wind-up

If your kid needs a night light or perhaps you’d just like an accent light with a touch of the Dark Side, check out the Star Wars Mood Lights.  They look like Darth Vader’s or a Storm Trooper’s helmet, and they have five LEDs inside to provide enough light to keep the dark at bay.

It’s too late to use these to ring in the New Year, but the Fourth of July will be here before you know it.  If you live somewhere fireworks are illegal, or if you just prefer not using them, you could use the LED Fireworks Grand Finale to have a safe light show.  These indoor

Did you have a Spirograph toy?  You remember, those plastic gear-like toys that let you draw amazing geometric designs?  Well, you won’t have to expend any effort to draw the designs if you use the Scribbler Drawing Robot from Perpetual Kid.  The Scribbler is actually a kit; you’ll need a hot glue gun and hot

Larry Geisz told us how to unlock our inner Jedi, and now this kit will help us unloose the power of the Dark Side.  The Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side (Vault Edition) is a book and artifacts stored in a pyramid-shaped vault.  In addition to the book, which is filled with instruction manuals

This is not strictly a gadget, but it’s a cute idea for the gadgety contact-lens wearer.  Instead of those generic cases, you can store you contacts in keyboard keys.  The compartments of the Contact Keys Lens Case are labeled like the L and R keys on a keyboard.  The snap-on covers keep your lenses safe

Remember Operation – the game where you were the surgeon removing the “bread basket” or “water on the knee” from your patient?  The worst that could happen to you with that game was being startled when the loud buzz sounded to indicate you had touched the sides of the patient’s “incision.”  With the the Shocking

Globes by themselves are both educational and cool, but MOVA globes take the cool factor to all new heights. These globes have a rotating inner sphere with graphics that is contained within a clear acrylic outer shell. The thin space between the inner globe and outer shell is filled with a clear fluid that buoyantly supports

I have a fascination with these cold-cathode tubes commonly called Nixie tubes.  They are no longer made, but there are still some available.  They lend themselves to all sorts of steampunk applications today.  They can light up to display numbers or letters, so they lend themselves especially well to clocks, some of which have been

I loved my View-Master when I was a kid.  Seeing 3D images through that little red, binocular-like toy never got boring.  View-Masters are still around, but somehow I just don’t find the same joy in them that I used to.  Perhaps if I could have my own images turned into 3D reels…  With Image3D, you

If you’re a fan of robots (like our own Gadgeteer, Julie), you will probably want to find a place on your walls for this artwork by Scott Park.  Synthespians has a total of 66 of TV’s and movie’s most famous robots and synthetic beings.  You’ll find Lt. Commander Data and WALL-E, Robocop and the Gunslinger

The PowerUp 3.0 is a newly-launched Kickstarter project that lets you pilot your homemade paper airplane using a smartphone. The PowerUp features a carbon fiber frame with a propeller on one end and a battery powered BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) receiver on the opposite end. The receiver is powered by a lithium polymer battery that provides 10 minutes

… and this “World’s Most Challenging Puzzle” results.  The 36 Cube is available from ThinkGeek, who likens it to a 3D Sudoku puzzle.  The game was developed by Dr. Derrick Niederman of MIT and is based on Euler’s 36-officers problem.  The goal is to place the colored pieces so that each color appears only once in

What do you get when you combine an author who is a former LEGO Group product designer and a trusty robot companion named Brickbot? You get The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 2 by Megan H. Rothrock. This is a 196 page hard cover book that features 100 example LEGO models from the world’s most creative

I’m more than a little fascinated with magnets. When I was a kid, I would take apart any device that I thought might have a magnet in it just so I could add it to my collection. As an adult, I still love magnets and recently had a 10 foot long steel sheet hung up

LEGO Space: Building the Future from No Starch Press and authors Peter Reid and Tim Goddard take readers on a fantastic intergalactic LEGO adventure with sleek starships, cool robots, creepy aliens, fearsome space pirates, and much more. This 216 page hardcover book features color images and a selection of step-by-step building instructions that will let

Griffin’s new app powered MOTO TC Rally touch-controlled race car connects to iOS devices via Bluetooth, letting users drive, maneuver and race using their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. “MOTO TC Rally isn’t your typical remote-controlled car,” said Erica Kyle, Youth Product Line Manager at Griffin. “We’ve added fun features like the Bump ‘n Run