RIP Aibo
Some years ago, I joined my parents out in Chicago on the last leg of their holiday. I’d never been there before so I was particularly fascinated (and slightly disturbed?!) by the American Girl shop - we don’t have anything like that in the UK and if we did I would dread to think what it looked like!
As we wandered on we passed what was the most exciting shop window front I have seen in a long while. Yes, that’s right, better than the i-Phone launch as far as I’m concerned.
There pottering around in the shop window was Aibo all happy and playful (as much as a dog robot can be) so dad and I left mum outside as we went in to check it out. Geekily an order for a special edition was placed and we waited for it to arrive.
After hours of fun teaching it to play with the ball, take photos of things that interested it and transferring them to the PC (no, the legs of a coffee table aren’t really that exciting), or even teaching it to say it’s name, I have to say it’s probably the only toy other than Lego that I didn’t get bored of.
When it came to me moving a few months back I had him all propped up and ready to bring with me but alas I can’t find his charger :(.
Anyway, I learnt of some terrible news yesterday when I was looking up how to downgrade Sony Vaio’s from Vista to XP* that the production of Aibos finished last year!
Okay, so I’m a little late to the table on this one but this is my opportunity to say RIP Aibo - you will be missed.
*customer request.