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While Sphero<\/a> has released a whole lineup\u00a0of robotic, Internet-connected toys, it remains best-known for its BB-8 droid<\/a> from Star Wars: The Force Awakens<\/em>. Today it\u2019s launching its next Disney tie-in \u2014 Ultimate Lightning McQueen.<\/p>\n This is\u00a0a car that you can control from your iPhone or Android, based on the Owen Wilson-voiced character from Pixar\u2019s Cars<\/em> franchise. (Cars 3<\/em> is coming out on June 16.) Ultimate Lightning McQueen is available today for a price of $299.<\/p>\n \u201cAs our partnership with Disney has evolved, we\u2019ve been able to start to look at further properties within the Disney portfolio,\u201d explained Product Manager Jenica Watts. (Sphero\u2019s initial connection to Disney was as part of the Disney Accelerator<\/a>.) \u201cOne of the teams had the opportunity to build an amazing, lifelike Lightning McQueen.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea of a remote-controlled car from Cars<\/em> might not seem all that novel, but it looks like Sphero has put a lot of work into bringing the character to life. Probably the first thing you\u2019ll notice is that his front windshield is an LCD screen displaying Lightning\u2019s animated eyes. And he talks, too \u2014 Watts said this is the first time a speaker has been built into a Sphero toy, and there\u2019s even an animatronic mouth that moves as he speaks.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a feature\u00a0that Sphero calls \u201cemotive suspension.\u201d That means Lightning doesn\u2019t just drive around \u2014 his left and right sides also twitch up and down with excitement, and he\u2019ll speak and move in response to taps on his roof, hood and doors.<\/p>\n This was all supervised by Pixar\u2019s Jay Ward, who\u2019s creative director for the Cars<\/em> franchise, with advice from Bobby Podesta, supervising animator on Cars 3<\/em>. The end result is that Ultimate Lightning McQueen has a real sense of personality \u2014 enough so that after we\u2019d been charging him for a few minutes in the corner of the TechCrunch New York office, we had to put him to sleep because of his constant demands for attention. (To be fair, that\u2019s\u00a0probably what we should have done in the first place.)<\/p>\n As for his performance on the road, the smartphone app offers an intuitive interface for driving him around at speeds of up to 6 miles per hour, with support for reversing and drifting<\/a>. I\u2019m not exactly an experienced remote-controlled driver (some of my friends would say that I\u2019m not much better with an actual car), but even so, I enjoyed crashing Ultimate Lightning McQueen around the Sphero demo space, and then around our office.<\/p>\n The only real difficulty I had was in the initial setup, where it took a couple of tries before I successfully paired my phone with Lightning and downloaded all the needed updates.<\/p>\n There other features I haven\u2019t had a chance to test\u00a0out yet. For one thing, Sphero says you can watch the Cars<\/em> films with Lightning and he\u2019ll offer his own commentary (his microphone will pick up the movie\u2019s audio). There\u2019s also a Pit Stop Panic game that you can play on your phone. And the company says it has created more than 150 animations for\u00a0Lightning to\u00a0perform, which users can connect together into scripts through an \u201cacting studio\u201d in the app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Ultimate](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/05\/cmc_3440.jpg?w=680\")
While Sphero has released a whole lineup\u00a0of robotic, Internet-connected toys, it remains best-known for its BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Today it’s launching its next Disney tie-in — Ultimate Lightning McQueen. This is\u00a0a car that you can control from your iPhone or Android, based on the Owen Wilson-voiced character from Pixar’s Cars franchise. (Cars 3 is… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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