TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Robo roll-out
Star Wars fans are a-beep with
excitement about Hasbro's droid toyIn the coming weeks, the desk of your office's resident Star Wars fan may become grand central station as she, or more likely, he, shows off a new acquisition.
The Hasbro R2D2 Interactive Astromech Droid is 15-inches tall, can serve as an alarm system and has a retractable arm capable of holding a 12-ounce beverage can. Neither the can nor batteries (four AAs and four Ds) are included.
It is equipped with speech recognition technology, an infrared location sensor and sonar navigation, songs, games, tricks and classic Star Wars sound effects loaded into it.
COURTESY PHOTO Yes, it also plays back the distress message from Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie.
R2 made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York City in February to great response, according to Audrey DeSimones, director of corporate communications for Hasbro.
"I think that R2 is such a spunky, memorable character from the Star Wars saga, he's really one of the favorites. People are going to love the opportunity to have their very own."
Pre-sales have been under way for several weeks via the Toys R Us Web site at $99.99 and the Wal-Mart site at $97.64, not including shipping; the sites list conflicting weights.
The online availability has spurred local interest.
"We've had two to three calls a week," said Tery Amano, manager of Toys R Us in Aiea. Pre-sales are offered online at www. toysrus.com but not in the store, she said.
The company Web site says the toy will be released Sept. 10, the same day R2 will be available in its stores for $114.99.
Hasbro is marketing the toy for children 8 and older but Amano said most of the telephone inquiries have been from adults who make no mention of kids.
The Wal-Mart Web site at www.wal mart.com lists the toy as out of stock but it "will be available in Hilo approximately the first week of October ... at a price of $97.64," said spokes-woman Karen Burk. The other five Hawaii Wal-Mart stores should roll out the new R2 about the same time.
Another national retailer to sell the toy will be Target, which has no stores in Hawaii, but which will ship most items sold via www.target.com to all 50 states. There is no online pre-sale agreement between Hasbro and Target.
Officials at KB Toys, with nine stores in the islands, were unavailable, but another popular toy retailer, Toys n' Joys in Kaimuki and Aiea are working on a droid deal.
They have an unconfirmed agreement to carry the robot, "but I don't think we are going to bank on it," said General Manager Alex Le. "The Star Wars thing is kind of dead already."
The stores focus mostly on video games and Japanese anime-inspired product lines such as Yu-Gi-Oh dueling cards.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com
