When one of the characters sings a song, Serafina wags her tail back and forth. As the cat's nemesis, Midas the dog, appears on screen, Serafina pouts, "That dog, he is my worst enemy!"
Tim Kilpin, senior vice president of marketing and design for girls' toys at Mattel, said the radio-wave technology at work in the toy and the DVD is invisible to children. "It's a level of interactivity that goes beyond anything we have ever done," he said.
With InteracTV by Fisher-Price, kids answer questions from characters like Dora the Explorer.
(Richard Drew -- AP)
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To create the Batwave Batmobile, Mattel worked with Warner Brothers Animation, which produces the series "The Batman." Each episode of the show in 2004 is encoded with an invisible stream of data transmitted to -- and received by -- a sensor attached to the toy car. The sensor detects tiny variations in the brightness of images on the screen -- the same technology used in a PDA or a cell phone.
Sound and motion are triggered "only when it's compelling or intuitive during the show, so we don't interrupt the flow" said Scott P. Miller, executive vice president of VEIL Interactive Technologies, which created the technology behind the Batmobile.
So when Batman nabs a villain in one episode, a voice floats from your child's Batmobile: "Gotcha!" it yells.
For Warner Brothers, the interactive car represents more exposure for the show without higher production costs, said Sander Schwartz, executive producer of "The Batman."
Not all of the interactive toys are based on high-tech gadgetry. Some are strikingly similar to the workings of a TV or DVD remote control.
Take InteracTV, really nothing more than repackaged episodes of popular TV shows, each supplemented with new educational content. Each game contains about 60 questions, which kids answer by pressing buttons on a wireless hand-held controller.
Kevin Curran, general manager at Fisher-Price Friends, which created the new toy, said the company "did not change the episodes. These are the best-rated shows on TV, and moms already think of this as good-for-you television."
But Mom isn't going to be playing the games. The question is whether kids crave all this interaction.
"We think they do," Curran said. "Kids want feedback."
