I think I have found out what the hot kid’s toy is though.  Upon listening to NPR the other day, I heard this news story about a sold out hamster toy named Zhu Zhu Hamster. Basically, it’s a motorized hamster that scurries around in its designated play set.  It makes noises and generally looks cute and cuddly as well.  And, of course, you can always add on to the hamster’s playset to make one giant place for the artificial intelligent toy to move around in.

I’m really not that impressed.  Having been told (from an early age) that hamsters were just rodents (in a family of dog and cat people),  I couldn’t imagine owning a hamster, much less a toy of them.  Besides, is that really that much of a departure from those older mechanical hamsters, minus the quasi-artificial intelligence?

Remember when the Furby was the hot new toy? I waited so long to get one, and when I did, I played with for… about an hour?  The concept was sort of neat, but the execution (its voice) turned out to be a little bit annoying.  Am I alone here?