Back in April I posted Death of a Toy about the fleeting momemnts before my son’s Johnny Applebot toy passed away. Today I got an email from Bart Feliciano. He was the original designer of Johnny Applebot. I got his permission to share what he wrote with everyone.

I designed Johnny Applebot when I worked at Trendmasters.

Just a comment on the original design.

Originally I designed this toy specifically to elicit emotional response
like what you describe.

After the suits got through with it it was reduced to the canned voice
responses that you saw in the finished product.

The original design had 2 eyebrows to allow it to emote better, but the
number of motors required to support 2 eyebrows independantly proved too
expensive. It would have been much more emotive though.

I’m glad to see it got even one reaction along the lines of my original
intent even after the realities of production and an unimaginitive
product manager got done with it.

The Johnny Applebot was a lot of fun when my son first got it. Pretty exciting to meet the designer of it, even if it was just via email.

Tags: [technology] [toys] [robots] [Design]