Pleo the robot pet dinosaur is really cute

A new product from the inventor of Furby (Ugobe). I met Pleo last night at a bar. It's not like it sounds: his owner Sarah brought him with her and he hung out on the table being cute -- managing never to fall off, thanks to his 36 built-in sensors. Today there's an unfavorable review in the NY Times about him but I totally disagree-- this toy is AMAZING!! It was like a real pet without the pooping! The way it moved, the way its skin was done, the interactivity and responsiveness were like nothing I've seen before in a consumer product. I hated the Sony dog. We had one for a while and got rid of it, it was irritating and terrorized my cat with its annoying mechanical barking. Pleo's sounds were much quieter, though if you look at the videos on http://www.pleoworld.com/ you would indeed think they were rather alarming Jurassic squeals-- they're not that bad, and this is coming from someone who is philosophically opposed to toys with sound. So turn your sound off, and look at how it moves--in real life, it's even better, more subtle. Its eyelids are very expressive. I guess you just need to see it in real life before you judge for yourself.

photo from the NYT article