A Hong Kong company was on Monday struggling to keep pace with demand for a belching, wolf-whistling robot expected to be one of the bestselling toys worldwide this Christmas.
Shops across the United Kingdom and United States have sold out of the hi-tech Robosapien — which also breaks wind and snores — after a surge in orders when it was named toy of the year by Hamleys last week.
Its inventor, former Nasa scientist Mark Tilden, is now looking for up to eight more factories in China to produce enough of the toys in time for Christmas.
Two factories in southern China are producing 5 000 of the 35cm-tall, remote-controlled robots a day, but supplies have already run out in the UK and the US.
”This is a real problem right now,” said Tilden (43). ”There are less than eight weeks to Christmas and we have people screaming for supplies.
”There are begging wars going on all around the world. Stock that didn’t move in Czechoslovakia is being vectored to Virginia.”
Tilden’s company, Hong Kong-based WowWee, is having difficulty finding factories capable of producing the robot, which has seven motors and more than 60 functions.
”Robosapien is at the top end of toy tech,” said Tilden. ”We squeezed the silicon until it screamed. It is well beyond what many of the Chinese factories are capable of.”
The hi-tech toy cost about $1-million and took two-and-a-half years to develop, and was turned down by US toy giant Hasbro, which thought it would not sell.
It has now sold 1,4-million units since its launch earlier this year, won a host of international awards and is widely tipped as Britain and the world’s number-one Christmas toy.
Research has found that buyers of the $100 toy are mostly women aged 18 to 55 who get Robosapien as a gift for sons, husbands or boyfriends.
Bachelor Tilden, who was born in the UK but grew up in Canada, worked for 10 years as a Nasa scientist and worked on robotics for missions to Mars.
Tilden says he built the seven-motor Robosapien in his own image.
”He is exactly me. All those burps and farts and gestures, even the dance steps, it is me,” he said.
”Now there are 1,4-million of them out there. I’m probably the most prolific father in the history of mankind.”
Robosapien, which is now sold on every continent, appeared on MTV and the Playboy Channel and has even been taken to the American observatory at the South Pole.
WowWee creative director Philip Duffy said Robosapien was cancelled four times before finally getting the go-ahead from his company.
”There were times when Mark and I said, ‘Do you think this will work?’ It was a rough development,” he said. ”But when we finally saw the working samples, we had complete belief.”
Duffy said they are already working on a second generation of Robosapien toys to go on the market next year.
”We want to establish robots as a new category in the same way the video-game industry was created in the mid-1970s with games like Pong,” he said. — Sapa-DPA