The editing on Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t finished yet but one of the characters already promises to be the hot toy of the Christmas season.
BB-8, the roly-poly little droid seen spinning across the screen in trailers for the highly anticipated movie, is now an app-controlled toy with an adaptive personality that responds to voice commands.
Toy maker Sphero teamed up with Lucasfilm and Disney Consumer Products to create a home version of the astromech droid. According to Sphero’s website, it will be available at a number of U.S. retailers, including Apple stores.
Photo: Sphero
The Force Awakens is scheduled to hit theaters in December. Trailers for the long-awaited sequel have been generating excitement and speculation since being introduced last year.
BB-8, an orange-and-silver droid that got its name from Episode VII director J.J. Abrams, belongs to Resistance pilot Poe Dameron and, despite its rolling ball base, fits the droid socket of Dameron’s X-wing fighter.
Sphero, which set the price of the smaller, earthly BB-8 at $150, bristles at the idea of its creation being called a toy. Like all the Star Wars droids we’ve come to know and love, BB-8 is a companion.
“It’s not a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. It’s right here, right now,” Sphero wrote in a blog entry today. “BB-8’s movements and personality are as authentic as they are advanced. He is playful, personable and true to the Star Wars galaxy.”
Photo: Sphero/YouTube
The Sphero BB-8 comes with a charging dock, is made of hard plastic and seems to have every chirp, beep and buzz of the movie version. The app will be available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
The droid’s domed head leans forward as it rolls in patrol mode and even has the ability to project a hologram image. If the promotional video, seen at the bottom of this post, is an indication of its behavior, the BB-8 seems like it made to attach and devote its energy to its operator.
Source: The Next Web
David Pierini is a former newspaper writer and long-time photographer. Considered a luddite by most of his friends, they did not believe him when he broke the news that he would be writing for a technology website. He is fascinated by human nature and would love to cultivate stories about the people driving the tech bus. Reach out to him at [email protected].
7 responses to “Your very own Star Wars BB-8 droid is not so far, far away”
“George Lucas …”?
You *really* don’t have your finger on that Star Wars pulse, do you?
Exactly!
You beat me to it.
I’ll get David to reword. Sure it’s a slip of the keyboard. Didn’t Luke Skywalker tell us all to live long and prosper?
No no no … sheesh. “Live long and prosper?”
That was Dumbledore to Scott Pilgrim. Do you have *any* sense of nerdery? At all?
:)
ERMAGERD!!! I can’t believe you said George Lucas still has a hand in Star Wars. Disney killed him and now uses his disembodied head for ideas… *sarcasm*
Hopefully not too many ideas. Or, rather, that they can filter the ideas by decade and disregard anything post ’83.
Seems like a cool little toy…but IMHO they should have built it so that he could simply roll onto and off of his charging dock.