This year ThinkGeek continued their awesome April Fools Day tradition of introducing a number of new “Fake” products.
iPad owners will get a kick out of this year’s Electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos & Barbie™ Digital Fashion Styling Head for iPad, two of the latest additions to ThinkGeek’s April Fools fake product lineup.
For just $29.99 you get an updated version of this classic 1970’s kids game. By placing their iPad into the classic Hungry Hungry Hippos stadium contraption, players can compete in a fast and frenzied glutton fest in full Retina display graphics. The gaming rig works in conjunction with a free app.
However this isn’t just the same Hungry Hungry Hippos you played as a kid, the plastic capacitive-padded hippo heads will scoop up the digital marbles across 10 different game boards, each with its own marble style. To keep things fresh, there are also 14 power-ups and three scoring modes: standard, Vegas, and Regulation Tournament. Best of all, it is “fully endorsed by the International Hungry Hungry Hippo Association (IHHHA)”.
Electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos iPad Game is for up to four players and will help you train up so that one day you might be the one to represent your town, county, or even country at IHHHP trials all over the world. Do you have what it takes to be a Hippo Champion?
Dubbed a “A Fashion Forward Appcessory”, the Barbie™ Digital Fashion Styling Head for iPad is a Barbie head-shaped stand for your iPad which transforms it into a fashion model ready to be transformed by your makeover expertise.
The Barbie™ Digital Fashion Styling Head comes with a brush for styling Barbie™’s hair and four touch-capacitive makeup accessories. Creating a new look for Barbie™ is as simple as swiping a new face onto the canvas. Every look you create for Barbie™ is saved instantly to the private and secure Barbie™ CloudCastle™ Network using the free Barbie™ DreamSync™ Fashion Styling App.
The stand/case works in conjunction with the aforementioned FREE Barbie™ DreamSync Fashion Styling App which “saves your glamorous designs and allows you to share them between devices or even with friends online”. The Barbie™ Digital Fashion Styling Head for iPad also retails for $29.99.
So the big question is, will these products be turned in into actual purchasable items like the iCade was? My prediction is that they will…at least in part. While there are already a number of Hungry Hungry Hippo clones out there for the iPad, people like tactile feedback, so there is a slight chance this could become reality, however I just don’t think the mass appeal would be there to make this feasible. Plus, I don’t know about you, but a bunch of kids (or adults) frantically smashing their hands down on plastic pieces resting top of my iPad, really doesn’t sound appealing. I think if anything comes of this, it will be a new, official Hungry Hungry Hippos game for the iPad.
That being said, I think the Barbie™ Digital Fashion Styling Head for iPad is a lot more feasible. Mattel already currently produces a popular Barbie Styling Head toy so this could be a natural progression. At the very least, I could easily see an app like this being released, as well as a lipstick shaped stylus, so I predict that we WILL see this one in some form or another in time for this year’s Holiday season.
