In the last week, the internet has been on fire with what’s likely going to be the hottest toy this Christmas, the Sphero BB-8 App-Enabled Droid. The upcoming movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is scheduled to be released on December 18th of this year. Following “Force Friday" last Friday, Star Wars mania is already upon us. Leading the charge of the first blitz of new toys, bedding, and clothing is the obnoxiously cute (and actually working) BB-8. Gone are the days of lame toys which are effectively just painted plastic that kinda sorta looks like but works nothing like something from a movie, instead, the Sphero BB-8 is a miniature version of the exact same droid to be featured in The Force Awakens.
If you missed the original reveal of BB-8 being, well, real, it happened earlier this year at a panel for The Force Awakens with a pretty wild reaction from the audience when it rolled out on stage:
Crazier yet is comparing this initial reveal with the teaser trailer that Sphero released when the BB-8 toy was teased last week. Watching the two back to back is just nuts:
What’s crazy about the Sphero BB-8 is it works exactly like the teaser trailer. Everything you see them doing is something you can do, provided you’ve dumped $150 on the toy and have a vaguely recent Bluetooth-enabled iOS device capable of running the free companion app. This alone feels sort of magical, as I distinctly remember my 80’s childhood being filled with toys which were beyond disappointing and worked nothing like the commercials on TV.
Like any new gizmo, there’s loads of unboxing videos out there, but in the box you’ve basically got the BB-8 ball, the magnetic head that goes on top of it, a inductive charging base, a USB to micro USB cable to plug the charging base in, and a piece of paper that effectively tells you to drop BB-8 into the charger then download the app and follow the instructions.
The first thing the app tells you to do is put your iOS device close to BB-8, at which point it seamlessly pairs then begins updating its firmware. I doubt my experience was typical, but updating the firmware on my BB-8 took a surprisingly long time, and failed several times before it finally started working. There didn’t appear to be any way to skip updating the firmware, so you’re sort of at the mercy of just waiting and hoping the app does its thing. If nothing else, it’s vaguely amusing that firmware updates have become so invasive across everything we own now that even toys need firmware updates before you can play with them. It’s like waiting for your parents to help you assemble the ten billion plastic pieces that made up the toy you just opened as a kid.
Once you’re actually inside of the BB-8 companion app, connected, and updated properly there’s a few different things you can do. “Drive" is likely the functionality most people are going to be interested in. It is super simple how it works, as you’ve effectively got two virtual joysticks you can fiddle with. One moves a LED around BB-8 which you want pointed at you, and the other steers BB-8 around. The targeting LED effectively just makes sure that then joystick for movement accurately reflects which direction BB-8 is going to roll. (Oh, and there’s buttons on another screen to make him say “Yes," “No," and do a couple other pre-programmed movements.)
This is where we hit our first potential points of vague disappointment which are worth being aware of before spending $150 on the BB-8 if your own. Depending on the surfaces in your house, BB-8 might not move around as well as you’d hope. The bottom of BB-8 is effectively a totally smooth ball, so you’ve got almost no traction to speak of. This means going over anything but the smalled door thresholds involves picking BB-8 up and putting it on the other side. Similarly, if you’ve got any transitions in your house between tile, hardwood, or similarly smooth flooring and carpet, BB-8 likely won’t be able to roll up on to the carpet without a head start. There’s a boost button in the app that makes BB-8 roll a little faster, and that can be useful for getting over problematic terrain, but you’ll notice in the BB-8 trailer they very intentionally only ever had him rolling around very smooth surfaces.
It’s possible to remedy this problem with one of the nubby covers that they sell for the original Sphero. BB-8 is the exact same size, so they work, you’ll just need to remove the magnetic head on top… Which you might end up doing anyway as functionally it doesn’t do a whole lot. BB-8’s head is held on with some reasonably strong magnets, and it rolls around on the top of BB-8 with a set of small wheels. The problem with this setup is it reminds me of the days of using old ball mice. You know how you’d eventually need to open up your mouse and clean out the crud on the wheels inside the mouse? This is kind of the same thing, and depending on what kind of surfaces you’re rolling it around on, these can get gunked up pretty quickly. BB-8 functions the same with the head on or off, although admittedly it loses a few cuteness points when you don’t have the head curiously rotating around. How problematic this is for you likely depends on the surfaces of your house. Hardwood and two pets means my floors have junk on them in less than 12 parsecs after vacuuming.
Oh, and last, but not least, all those droid sounds you hear as BB-8 is rolling around in the trailer? Those come from your iPhone, but BB-8 itself, which seems strange as it just makes basic beepy droid noises. It’d be way cooler if the sounds came from BB-8, but, whatever. These aren’t deal breakers by any stretch of the imagination, it just felt worth mentioning.
Once you get tired of driving BB-8 around and want to fiddle with the other functionality of the toy, you’ll eventually find your way to the “Messages" section of the app. This is neat to do a couple times, but it’s basically just an augmented reality gimmick. You can record messages with your iPhone camera, then have BB-8 play them back sort of like how R2-D2 can, complete with the blue Star Wars-ized tint. Playing them back is as simple as centering BB-8 inside the app’s camera view, and then it “projects" your recorded message. I’ve seen so much weird augmented reality junk that this didn’t do much for me, but I imagine it could potentially be pretty magical for kids.
“Patrol" is probably the coolest functionality, as BB-8 basically just roams around on his own. It’s a little similar to having a Roomba, as BB-8 will just wander around, bumping into things, looking around, and making droid sounds (from your iPhone). BB-8’s behavior in this mode seems quite random, but it’s still pretty neat to just have a droid wandering around your house.
How badly you need a BB-8 largely depends on how much of a Star Wars fan you are. If you’ve always dreamed of having an actual working droid of your own, and you don’t mind dropping the cash, go wild. At the same time, I think it’s totally understandable to look at the price tag and what BB-8 does, and have some hesitation. Depending on how big of a role BB-8 plays in the new movie (It seems like they’re kind of framing him as the “new R2-D2") I could see this being a very, very hot toy this Christmas. It’s already nearly impossible to find, but that could just be retailers dealing with the initial rush of Star Wars fanatics racing to get the latest and greatest toy.
Personally though, the fervor over the BB-8 toy is a little mystifying to me. We’ve been covering Sphero for quite literally years now. They first hit the scene via GearBox which is/was a funded company looking to build “smart toys." Here’s the very first reveal of their smart ball:
Looks pretty familiar, right? That video is over five years old. Six months or so later, it gained the name “Sphero" and was shown off at CES. Again, this came with another video showing the further evolution of the smart ball platform… Which, again, is not really a whole lot different from BB-8:
I’ve had a Sphero smart ball toy since they were first released in 2011. Mine is dead now, and won’t hold a charge anymore, but the toy functionally has remained the same. The reason this is so fascinating, is because the overall reaction across the board to the original Sphero was, “That’s neat I guess but $100 for a ball I fiddle with using an app on my phone seems kind of expensive and not that useful."
Throw the “Star Wars" name on the box, give it a magnetic head, and call it a droid though? It feels like Malibu Stacy with a new hat.
If nothing else, it just goes to show the raw power of the Star Wars brand when it comes to being applied to the right thing at the right time and turns said thing into gold. The reaction between the two nearly identical products is so night and day it’s incredible. From “Oh that’s neat I guess" to “I’m standing in line because I heard Target was doing a midnight launch for Force Friday toys and I need a BB-8 that bad. In the end…
I’m curious how our community feels about BB-8. Have any of our readers bought one? Is BB-8 on your Christmas list? Are you planning on buying one for your kids? Is the power of the Star Wars branding strong enough that it’s pushing you over the edge if you were around for the original “Huh, that’s neat" of the Sphero? I’d love to know. I’m glad I managed to pick one up as a piece of iOS memorabilia, and the friends I’ve shown it to have been awfully impressed… But isn’t it just Malibu Stacy with a new hat?
