Gadgetoid

To bring a little variety to Gadgetoid I’ve decided to start adding coverage of low-end gadgets including toys and all manner of things that you’re likely to find at stores like Firebox. Variety, they say, is the spice of life; so take a break from drooling over things you’re never going to buy and start getting those Christmas gift ideas flowing!

To mark the start of this new coverage I’ll be looking at the Salvation 9 Radio Controlled Helicopter. It’s a small indoor toy with an nominal price and is a lot of fun to fly. It’s also markedly better than the smaller Picoz, affording proper degrees of control and radio control rather than infra-red, without being that much more expensive.

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Combining a wrist-rest, pressure sensitivity, lights and stickiness in the same gadget sounds completely insane… and it is. “Ur. Frog” and “Ur Super High Light Frog” (right) have set out to push the limits of just what craziness we can hook up to our free USB ports to keep out the dust.

To their credit they look cute and quirky enough to make great gifts and the ability to play a few games using the “Ur. Frog” pressure sensor adds the icing to the cake. Stress relief, anyone? Okay, I’m getting funny looks across the desk from just thinking about plonking one of these down and proceeding to thump it periodically.

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Admit it, you love remote control toys. No matter how old I get I still jump at the chance to play with anything that runs on batteries, makes lots of noise and probably shouldn’t really be used indoors.

The Salvation 9 would be no exception, only recently I got my hands upon a polystyrene-bodied Infra-red controlled helicopter for about £20 that was impossible to control and even more impossible not to break. The Salvation 9 is bigger, boasts more precise control and certainly looks the part. Of course it’s also a shade more expensive at about £40 but it’s still not bad for something that promises to be so much fun.

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