There’s a long and noble tradition of children’s toys that, at their core, are noisemakers, from fake laser guns to fake hands that clap. Kids love noise! And a new Kickstarter-funded toy might be the next big noisemaker toy that will make parents want to stab their eardrums with mechanical pencils.
Moff, currently in pre-production and looking for funding on Kickstarter, is a silicone wristband with an array of sensors that may remind you of a fitness tracker, like a Fuelband or Fitbit. It has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone–but it’s not designed to track your footsteps. Instead, it’s designed to turn imagination into reality through sound.
Swing your arm like a tennis racquet, and it’ll make a realistic “thwack” sound. Pick up a broom and strum the brush end like a guitar, and Moff will emit a sound like a guitar. Point it like a gun, and it’ll make a laser gun noise. It’s kind of a do-anything noisemaker, which we’re sure parents will love.
You choose different sound effects by selecting them on a smartphone. That also makes it ripe for development; there’s not really anything it can’t do within those parameters. There’ll be an open SDK for developers, and hopefully they’ll get to work on expanding the possibilities. We’d like, for example, to see apps that have multiple Moff units communicating with each other, so you could actually play a game of “tennis” instead of just hearing a noise when you swing your arm. It could be almost like a mobile version of the Nintendo Wii, if development leads there.
It’s only been on Kickstarter for a few days, and already it’s earned more than half its requested $20,000. It’ll retail for $49 when released, which the creators think could be as early as this summer.