Image from wowwee.com
WowWee appears to be reaching beyond their robotic toy roots, and exploring the worlds of music and food. I can understand music since it can be geeky, and in the case of Paper Jamz, appear to be quite hackable, but food, really? I’ll refrain from commenting on the food products, but if you Google for “EZ2 MAKE” you’ll find plenty of reasons to avoid them.
The WowWee Paper Jamz, however, have some potential. I received a loaner guitar that my son and I gave some play time. Each guitar comes with three preloaded songs, and a freestyle mode. Ours came loaded with Back In Black, Paranoid, and Walk This Way. Freestyle has more playing power, but was still limited to 10-15 minutes at a stretch. Also available are a drum kit and an amplifier. How it plays with half a dozen kids and multiple instruments remains to be seen.
Image from WowWee
After our second or third Jamz session, my son made me proud by asking if we could take it apart. If only we didn’t have to send this one back.
I’ll definitely be buying one when they hit the streets in July for about $25 and will report back here what the guts look like. While the guitar does have a plastic back, it is very thin, and the face that you strum is made of cardboard. This leaves me thinking they are using capacitive touch sensors for the 10 frets, large strumming area, and three knobs. I’m curious to see what’s inside and if I can use the chip, or bend some circuits.
Other WowWee stories on GeekDad:
WowWee’s 2009 Lineup Offers Improvements, Surprises
Go-Robo, Software for WowWee
GeekDad Review: WowWee Chatterbot
