Most of us have fond memories of our plush toys from childhood. We hugged them and squeezed them till they burst at the seams. The current generation of children still loves their huggable plush toys. But now they are not simply passive play pals. A partnership between huggable plush toy maker Bluebee Pals and augmented reality developers Leap With Alice has brought forth the first augmented reality toys that children can hug and interact with.
Bluebee Pals—Now Smarter and More Engaging for Children
Bluebee Pals has a full range of huggable plush toys for all preferences:
- Leo the Lion
- Sammy the Bear
- Hudson the Dog
- Riley the Zebra
- Lily the Lamb
- Parker the Monkey
The collaboration with Leap With Alice has endowed all these friendly and playful characters with augmented reality capacities. The plus toys are accompanied by a free app—the Bluebee Pals Learning App, available for Android and iOS. This app interacts with the AR capabilities installed in the plush toys and allows them to move its head and mouth in sync with the words of the stories loaded in the app. This makes it look like the augmented reality toys are actually telling the story.
Augmented Reality Toys Help Children Achieve Developmental Goals
Leap With Alice and Bluebee Pals have created more than a cool new gadget for children. This range of augmented reality toys can help children develop their cognitive and emotional abilities, especially children with dyslexia or autism.
Combining the engaging AR visuals of the story viewed through a smart device with the movements of the toy helps children internalize its meaning, learn new words and form an emotional attachment to the toy.
As Laura Jiencke, the Founder and CEO of Bluebee Pals, stated: “We actively involved teachers, parents, and therapists from across the country to analyze ways we could make our Bluebee Pals even better-learning tools for children.”
Educational Toys are Going to Become Smarter than Ever
Both Bluebee Pals and Leap With Alice have a strong background in educational activities. Bluebee Pals has already received 12 awards for its educational toys and donates thousands of plush toys to nonprofit organizations and educational establishments for children with learning challenges.
In turn, Leap With Alice specializes in developing free augmented reality tools to create, buy and sell educational content. The company’s Alice Labs free creation suite is aimed specifically at school teachers and educators, helping them turn their lessons into immersive and interactive experiences.
The new Bluebee Pals augmented reality toys prove that new technologies can be embedded in almost any tool or object with the purpose of making education more engaging and accessible to all children, including those with special needs.
