Tag Archives: toys

It's about a year late, but the Barbie Phone is finally here. This is not a smartphone, but a clamshell-style feature phone that's all pink and branded with Mattel's Barbie logo. The handset has a shiny mirror on the front and a host of accessories like charms and gem stickers …

“I’m bored” is something most parents hear daily over the summer holidays. Within moments of the school gates clanging shut, my kids had emptied the kitchen of snacks, dispersed their belongings around the house, and started to nag me about how we never do anything fun. Entertaining your kids is …

On its earnings call at the end of April, Newell Brands, which owns the 70-year-old Elmer's Glue business, reported historically positive numbers for the first quarter of 2024. It was Elmer’s first cash-flow-positive Q1 in four years, and only its second positive quarter since 2016. This growth is mostly thanks …

Does anyone want to buy a humanoid robot for $16,000? The latest product from Unitree hopes that you will: Meet the Unitree G1, a “Humanoid agent AI avatar,” aka a robot. If you haven't heard of Unitree, it's sort of the go-to “budget Chinese option” in the robot space. You're …

The only thing better than being a professional gear tester? Being the child of a gear tester. As a kid whose parent writes about gear for a living, you get a constant drip of new stuff to play with and opine on, but none of the obligation to rigorously test …

Lego has built an empire out of plastic. It was always thus. The bricks weren’t originally made from wood, or metal, or some other material. Ever since the company’s founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, bought Denmark’s first plastic-injection molding machine in 1946, Lego pieces have been derived from oil, a fossil …

I don’t remember when my family first acquired our first Lego bricks. Like awakening from a fever dream, I regained consciousness in the past few years and realized we now have a whole room dedicated to Lego, with thousands of bricks organized by color in a chest-high shelving unit (and …