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Shopping for Junior?

The flying cars they promised us as children have yet to show up in reality. But dang if the toys haven't gotten better and more fascinating than we could possibly have imagined in our youth, case in point.

Wild Planet Entertainment Inc. is debuting this week the Spy Video Trakr, a remote controlled robotic car which includes a night-vision video camera, speakers and route-mapping feature. Oh yes, dear readers, you can cause a lot of trouble with toy like that. CEO Daniel Grossman knows it and relishes in it.

He told the Wall Street Journal,"A kid can program the Trakr to snap a picture of his sister talking on the phone when she is supposed to be doing homework, then drive the car to his parents and rat her out with a pre-recorded message." Wow! Not only is the remote controlled car pre-equipped as a spying device but it is programmable, so it can be adjusted to do even more. Does this thing have military applications or what? Or perhaps is it already borrowing technology from existing military applications, like the pilotless drones killing in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Real night vision binoculars are already available as a kid's toy, those with a range of fifty feet retail for $59. According to the Journal, Wild Planet has already made available for download a night-vision feature on the car's remote control LCD color screen to see the car as it maneuvers in the dark.

Wild Planet Entertainment is not the only toy company making available toys that ape the trend magnified by the i-Phone, reprogramming, building your own applications. The Wall Street Journal article cites, "Robonica Ltd., a South Africa-based toy robot company, recently debuted Roboni-i, a remote-controlled two-wheeled robot that has a Web site and comes with software that enables users to rewrite the robot's basic's instructions."

The future of toys is upon us.

Labels: Pop Culture, technology