A Live Cricket Steers Mattel’s New Autonomous Toy Car

Instead of releasing yet another smartphone - check RC toy dog car to the yawning of children everywhere , Mattel ’s Bug Racertakes kids out of the equation altogether . They still get to watch it rush around a elbow room , but this toy car ’s control by a live cricket scurrying around the vehicle ’s cockpit .

The Bug Racer does n’t add up with any insects , so in accession to hunting down four AA batteries , a trip to the best-loved computer memory is demand to recruit a driver . Using an include grasping tool kids can introduce their cricket to its fancy new see - through home ground which have a survive area , a dining arena for feeding , and a magnify cockpit .

The home ground allows tike to learn their cricket in its not - so - natural environment , but the real fun begins when the insect is coaxed into the cockpit and the plastic housing is stick in into the Bug Racer . Motion sensor inside the car track the cricket ’s movement , steering it left or right depending on which side of the cockpit the cricket has scurried over to .

As the car careens around a room bumping into random object ( automatically reversing when it does ) you ’ll wonder if the cricket is just randomly scurrying about the cockpit , or if it ’s actually look for a way to escape back into the tangible humans . If that becomes a genuine concern , the Bug Racer also has an autodrive mode which claim the control away from the cricket gadget driver .

The Bug Racer sound like it could be an awkwardly - late April Fool ’s frivolity , and the mad promotional video Mattel created for the toy dog make it even harder to consider this is a existent product .

But it ’s 100 percent legit , and is already useable exclusively fromToys ‘ universal gas constant ’ Usfor $ 35 . Remember , that does n’t admit the price of crickets , so you ’ll have to budget in an extra dollar bill for 100 Modern member to your racing team . [ Bug Racer ]

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