The Discovery Rainbow In My Room makes a great gift if you want to steer your kid toward Science and away from say, Halo. Though I doubt most boys would appreciate this. It fits in more in a room filled with My Little Pony’s.

LED lights recreate the colors of a real rainbow and the motion-activated sensor turns the unit off with a wave of your hand.

There is a gadget for everything and we have the proof to back up that claim. The Electric Plane Launcher by Willow Tree Toys is the mechanical replacement for your biological throwing arm. This battery operated horizontal launching platform will catapult your paper airplanes up to a whopping 30 miles per hour, fast enough to produce a wave of envy in your rivals. It works by using a motor to spin two plastic wheels around, generating the force needed to push your paper bird of flight out and into the air to soar away from you. It’s like a scaled down version of a fighter catapult on an aircraft carrier, or at least we’re going to pretend it’s like that.

$15.95 will get you one of these along with the title “King of the Office Air Force”.

RC cars aren’t just for kids anymore. Not when your toy can reach speeds up to 60 MPH. Let’s face it, the bigger and faster they are, the more we want one under our Christmas tree.

This particular RC car is gas powered. Hence the power. It’s a 1:5 scale replica of a Ford GT, which is also built for speed. Under the hood is a 23cc engine with 15kb metal gear ratio, 450cc fuel tank, and even disc brakes. Just in case you want to slow down. Yeah right.

While you weren’t looking Tetris has been reborn. It has now jumped from the video game realm into reality. Basically, they took the concept of Connect Four and applied a Tetris theme. They are calling it Tetris Tower 3-D. Simple, yet ingenious.

They seem to be in rather short supply, but they can be found. You can get one on Amazon(And they only seem to have one at this moment.) for $49.99.

This is a great gift for kids who play too many video games. When your parents tell you to get your head out of that video game, you can play this one in reality and still get your fix. “But Mom, this isn’t a video game.” Mom knows it is…Or was. At this point mom will be confused and move on to other things.

[Gadgets-Weblog] VIA [Akihabaranews]

Here are some clever LEGO ads by FCB Johannesburg showing that kids might not necessarily need elaborate kits, and what a simple LEGO brick design might look like through the eyes of a child. Very cool.

UrbanRetroLifeStyle

Look. Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Asimo?

If you are like me, you love robots. And like me you have probably wished that little robots were flying around you in the air at all times. You probably also love Asimo, Honda’s robot. Well, my friends, a dream has now come true that combines all of those things. I for one, am very happy.

Kyosho’s Robo Hopper stands about 6-inches tall and looks an awful lot like Asimo. You can operate him like any other remote controlled helicopter, scaring humans everywhere into thinking that robots are taking over the world with tiny air vehicles.

We just can’t help but smile every time we look at this picture. What looks like a scene out of Jackass, the WildSling is a giant, three-person slingshot (or waterbomb catapult as the company calls it). The design calls for two people standing a safe distance apart to hold the WildSling handles while a third person pulls back the business end of the huge slingshot and aims for launch.

You probably wouldn’t want to launch anything more dangerous than a water balloon, and 50 balloons come with this package. The company says it can launch a balloon as far as 300 feet but I’m sure other things could go farther.

We’re one week away from the “Transformers” movie arriving on DVD and we thought it would be time for a related story. A pair of gearheads in Nanjing must be really big fans of the Transformers franchise because they turned a real-life Citroen car and turned it into a Transformer-looking robot. The project cost the geeks in disguise about $8,000 while the actual Transformer model weighs in at 600 kilos. The thing looks awesome and more than a little like Bumblebee in the “Transformers” movie. Now if these guys could build Soundwave next they would forever be my heroes.

Love golf? Love Mario and Luigi? Then rejoice, Nintendo fanboy. This is your lucky day. Mario Golf isn’t just for the TV screen anymore. Now you can enjoy it on your desk too. Choose from either Mario or Luigi. They come with a Famicom style remote that controls the swing using the A and B buttons.

No collecting coins, or jumping on turtles here. No final showdown with Bowser. These guys are on vacation and just want a relaxing game of golf. Both Mario and Luigi are 3″ tall and require 2 AAA batteries. Each comes with 2 balls and a hole.

Like the name implies the Piano Can from StrapYa is a piano conveniently rolled up in yellow can donned by a somewhat dismal looking duck who probably isn’t all too happy about his endorsement gig. It runs on batteries with eight keys each playing different notes along with an “auto” mode that will play a different short song for each of the keys. The top of the can has a little speaker that also doubles as a crank to roll the piano back into the can upon completion of your limited performance. A video of the Piano Can in action is included below:

While it may be more impractical than useful there is something very appealing about being able to own your own moon and have the power to switch it on or off whenever you feel like it. Russian designers have come up with a concept they call a “Personal Moon”, a crescent-shaped light box that provides a brilliant while glow for your immediate vicinity. The artificial moon is bright enough to stand out from quite a distance away and it seems to radiate a lot of lumens (specifics weren’t available on the designers’ official website and neither was a price.)

The uses for such a cool toy are only limited by your imagination and the amount of storage space you have. Something like this hanging from a tree could be fantastic for lighting up your yard at night or for placing on top of your house to make life easier for those delivery drivers. Now what about making it change colors?

With Halloween coming up in 31 days it’s time to start thinking about how to spook up your front yard. If you’re looking for something that installs and breaks down fast perhaps your solution is Gemmy’s Inflatable Cryptic Halloween Castle. This thing is surprisingly big standing at 12 1/2 feet tall and — get this — 17 feet long. Your trick-or-treaters can enter through the front and stand inside the castle where stringers, flashing lights, hanging bats and glowing eyes await. There are also spooky themed music and sound effects all of which are motion controlled. To inflate the castle you need to plug in the air blower (which comes with the product) and let electricity do the rest. It’s a pricey toy (prices range between $300 to $499) for your front yard but the benefit is that you will be the coolest tricked out house on your block.

These little bumper cars come as a set of two, one red and one blue, each with their own wireless remote control. The controllers let you drive them forward, back, left or right similar to real bumper cars with the goal of bumping your opponent. Each mouse-like bumper car has sensors on each side on on the back that tally up your hits along with headlight “eyes” and noises when you get bumped. After three hits your car freezes indicating that you lost the match. The cars measure a little over 4 inches long and from the product page video they seem to move pretty quick. The set goes for $40 before you add in the cost of the required 10 AAA batteries.

Oregon Scientific and Lucasfilm want to help your kids learn Star Wars style. To that end they’ve unveiled some new Star Wars themed learning laptops targeted at different age groups - Darth Vader (ages 5 and up, $60) and R2-D2 (ages 3 and up, $25).

The Star Wars laptops are currently available as electronic learning devices for youngsters. The Darth Vader laptop offers over 50 activities, letting children “pick-up the interactive lightsaber and join the iconic villain on a variety of missions.” Activities include logic, memory and music games and the laptop is equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. The R2-D2 laptop, meanwhile, lets kids learn by “expanding their vocabulary, having fun with numbers, and developing logic and memory skills” via interactive adventures with R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Zip Zip Memory Bricks are small USB 2.0 Flash memory drives encased inside a Lego-type toy building brick. When the cap is on they appear like a normal toy brick, but pulling one half of the brick apart exposes the USB 2.0 connector. They come in colors of green, yellow, blue, red, black or white, much like Lego bricks do, and have a capacity of 1GB.

The Memory Bricks also have a lanyard attached to make them harder to lose and easier to identify should you happen to drop it into a pile of regular toy bricks. The company says you can stack memory bricks just like you would with regular toy bricks, but what would be cooler is if the memory would stack up as well!