It's 2020.
And there's one question on everyone's mind.
Shouldn't we all have robot best friends by now?
I'm Bridget Carey at New York Toy Fair to find the coolest robot coming this year.
Let's break it down.
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Growing up, I always thought the ultimate Toy the future would be the robot best friend, somebody that could follow you around you cool tricks play games.
How close are we to that dream Toy?
Time to go robot hunting at the New York Toy Fair.
Let's roll.
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I think I found the dream robot that everyone has always wanted.
And when they were a kid, a real life Transformer.
Check this out.
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This is the Robosen T9 and it is a very programmable, advanced robot where it answers to voice commands You can control it with an app, and it has so many different animations built into.
So even if you're someone who doesn't know how to program, it's got a lot of fun already started out of the box.
How cool is it to have something that drives and walks and you can remote control it, but also program it and it takes voice commands.
There's so many cool things.
That's why it's $500 You could buy the T9 right now.
And yes, it's visually outstanding but that price is steep.
You are paying for the craftsmanship of all those smooth servo motors that make it such an agile and flexible robot.
Surely there's something we can find at a better price range for a kid's toy.
My favorite kind of robot, the battling robot.
These are the ninja boss by Spin Master.
And what makes them so funny are their weapons.
They can recognize all different kinds of weapons that you put in their hand.
Each of the Ninja bots have their own personality.
This is the red dragon.
This is Black Tiger, and you would set up their battle with what weapon you want.
So in this case, Red Dragon has a plunger Black Tiger, the spatula.
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They come in packs of two, for about $50.
Or, if you want the $30, there is one that comes with a little training dummy.
But, let's be honest, the fun, here, is seeing these two go at it.
So it's coming out August 1st.
And, gotta say, pretty adorable.
In a vicious killer battle sort of way.
I love how you can keep playing again and again and it's always different.
But these warriors are more for fighting your best friend than needing a best friend robot.
How about something more traditional?
Now here's a robot you may remember.
MiP is back now as MiP Arcade.
He has about 30 or so games that you can play and interacts with an app.
There's more things you can do like even learn programming skills by being able to program him to do different things like dance.
You has the basketball hoop.
Nick arcade comes out later this year for $100, ut it's just a prototype right now.
I still didn't get to see all the cool tricks you can do.
So to get the full experience of this little fella, you're gonna need an app.
All though, me personally, I'd just rather have a robot buddy that can just have fun and hang with me, play some basketball if I can even shoot anything.
It's okay.
We'll work on it.
I'm loving all these tricks but something is missing in these robot buddies.
And I can't quite put my finger on it.
Maybe we need to find something more cute.
I've seen plenty of robot dogs, but never a robot balloon dog.
This is Squeakee, and he's inflated with quite a bit of personality.
Check out some of the tricks he can do, and he has sensors on his belly.
So hey, There you are little guy.
So let's say I want to be a little naughty and maybe give them a little poke.
What would happen?
Here, let me give you some more air Would you look at this cutie This is Moji the lovable Labradoodle and what makes this interactive robot pet so interesting is that it has emotions that it can share with you in little emoji icons on the color emojis.
Moji now you get it, it all comes together.
[LAUGH] You can also use voice commands to talk to Moji and have two different tricks Moji sit.
This measure here is just a prototype but the final model will have all these touch sensors so you can pet the head and the back in different places and it'll react.
In fact, when you add up all the different ways to play with the pooch, whether it's toys or interactive cards, There'll be over 150 different reactions you can get out of Moji.
It's gonna cost $100 coming out later this year.
I'm determined to find answers.
But the deeper I go into the show floor, the harder it's getting to spot the quality robots from the junk.
Some are trying too hard to make a big splash Some others like the Prank Bro, just wanna make trouble.
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Frankly, I feel like I'm running out of gas.
Time to pick up the pace.
I must find a robot with all the right moves.
I'm not doing it.
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I'm trying.
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How about a robot where you can program it to dance your own way this is dance beatz from Tomey coming out later this year for $60.
You can program it to do all sorts of dances or just groove to music and even as its own speaker, it could do dance battles you want to dance from fancy I was seeing education about programming skills built into a few robots like Botzees for little kids.
And also there's another one called Botley, and he's programmed with a remote control, no screen required.
So there's educational ones and cuddly ones and ones with cool tricks.
What's the perfect toy robots?
I need some direction here.
So I found a quiet place to reflect with Jennifer Lynch.
She's a toy trends specialist with the Toy Association.
So I think we're seeing a lot more toy companies manufacturers be a lot more thoughtful and how they're applying tech to toys and And that's just the fact that more parents consumers are looking for a more balanced dose of classic play phone and look at like robotics toys tech toys of the past couple years.
Sometimes what we We've seen is there has been a disconnect in terms of the physical play of the toy and the screen time, and that's something that parents are really paying attention to is how much screen time their children are playing with, they want them to be getting up active, and so we are looking for toys now that are more balanced.
Winston that.
All right, toy makers want robots to get us moving and to get us thinking differently, but we should not expect a robot best friend to do it all when parents don't want to buy something complicated.
After 100 years we haven't really gotten too far from this something that's really good at one trick.
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On the other hand robotics are making toys more lifelike, and it shows we're clearly getting closer to the inevitable wiping away of humanity by the robot apocalypse.
Maybe we can't get the Perfect robot yet, but you know what?
We can have fun.
And in the end, the thing that brings me the most joy is watching two robots beat the living gears out of each other.
Go, go, go, go!
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