Items tagged with (nasdaq:mat)
Mattel brought its A-game to the Toy Industry Association's Toy Fair in New York this week by reimagining a pair of products for the modern generation. One of those products is the ThingMaker, a $300 3D printer that allows kids to easily and safely make their own toys, and the other is a retooled View-Master based on Google's Cardboard VR viewer. It's a logical fit—for decades the View-Master has been treating eyeballs to rudimentary 3D experiences by inserting paper cards with photos in them. A pull of the plastic lever would cycle through the various photos, which in a sense you could liken to an early version of virtual reality. Now that technology has advanced leaps and bounds since the original...
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Had you been a child in the 1960s, you might remember something called the ThingMaker, a do-it-yourself toy creation kit from Mattel that came out decades before 3D printing would itself become a thing. In that respect, it was an idea well ahead of its time, so Mattel is bringing it back as a reimagined product for the modern era This time around, the relaunched ThingMaker is a pre-assembled 3D printer that's purportedly quick and easy to setup and use—just plug it in, wirelessly link it to the ThingMaker Design app developed by AutoDesk (it's available free of charge for both iOS and Android devices), and push a button to export your files. "We're excited to work with a storied company like...
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Paper printing? That's old-school. Today, the popularity surrounding 3D printing is immense, and it's even gone on to spawn other sorts of interesting printing scenarios, such as printing fabrics and soft objects. While so far, it's mostly been a select few who've taken advantage of 3D printing, technological advances and dropping prices will begin to make it more widely available - even to kids. Autodesk's Ember 3D printer That could happen sooner than later thanks to a partnership that just kicked off between Autodesk and Mattel. Based off of its Spark 3D printing platform, Autodesk is going to be releasing a couple of new apps that will help make 3D design and printing easier than ever so...
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In December, Google proudly announced that its innovative Cardboard VR contraption had made it into the hands of over 500,000 consumers since its introduction in mid-2014. With a price tag of $20 or less, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many enthusiasts were willing to give Google a shot with its vision of virtual reality considering that competing solutions like Samsung’s Gear VR cost $199. Google is now taking everything that makes Cardboard great and is pairing it with a household name that many of us came to know very well as children: Mattel. Together, Google and Mattel have developed the next generation of the View-Master, a photo viewer that I spent countless hours starting through...
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