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Robot-toy manufacturers are trying to crack a barrier that has so far prevented most of their electronics-packed products from becoming as loved as teddy bears.

Consider the Tribot, a bright red android from the WowWee company that scoots around the floor making wisecrack comments as it avoids obstacles. On release in 2008, the little robot amazed everyone.

But most customer reviews on shopping Web sites say the novelty soon palls. For parents, it palls even faster. Listening to Tribot’s raspy voice repeating for the 10th or 20th time that “you really need to vacuum” your floor can be a form of mental torture.

Trade buyers are on the lookout for robotic toys that make friends instead of becoming annoying.

BMO Capital Markets, a New York financial services company, offered an end-of-year, top-10 toy list in December that gave pride of place to Zhu Zhu Pets, a new product from a St. Louis, Missouri-based company, Cepia.

US retailers kept running out of stock of the hot product in the days before Christmas, BMO noted.

The Pets are a series of robotic hamsters that respond to stroking and other attention with squeaks of pleasure. Originally released under the name Go Go Pets, they work best with girls aged 4 to 8.

Since coming out in September, the Pets, which come with beds, blankets, tunnels to run through and cars to ride in, have been mainly squeaking their way round US playrooms, but a trading company, TDG, has moved modest numbers to Europe.

Andre Wiesmueller, European director of TDG, said in Hamburg, Germany, “I’ve got seven kids myself.” He tried out the Pets on his own family and a 5- and 7-year-old still loved the furry hamsters nine weeks later.

Artificial substitutes for live pets appeal to some parents because infant excitement over animals often does not last a pet’s lifetime, and parents end up having to care for rodents.

Cepia explicitly appeals to other parental concerns, noting that the battery-powered toys “don’t poop, die or stink.”

Toy professionals say the idea of a toy that simulates friendship and dependence toward its under-8 owner has something in common with the Tamagotchi, a craze invented in Japan in 1996.

A tiny computer, the Tamagotchi contained the image of a chick-bird that had to be given virtual food and nurturing every few hours.

The new generation of robots takes the idea a step further with sensors that respond to obstacles or noises.

The Tribot, for example, can play watchdog and kick up a ruckus if you try to sneak past it, while the Pets can be switched into nurture mode where they demand attention, then make cooing noises when stroked.

Rainer Buland, an academic at the University of Salzburg’s Department of Music who studies play, said in an interview that a fascination with toys that appear to be alive goes all the way back to the first “automatons” in the 18th century.

“At the end of the day they are an illusion,” he said. “Often we do need substitutes to overcome loneliness. But a child does not need them at times when someone else is there to play with them.”

Buland dismissed the excitement about robotic “friends” as “hype,” while conceding that they are harmless as toys.

But he noted that automatons in their day did disturb society’s attitude toward real animals, impelling some philosophers to claim that animals were nothing more than a superior form of robot.  



DPA