Why Augmented Reality Toys haven’t hit your kids’ Christmas List Yet

Over the past several years, Augmented Reality has been becoming ever more prevalent in the lives of average consumers. Many companies from a range of industries have been trying to incorporate AR into their products. It seems, though, that the average consumer is still not completely impressed with AR and many don’t believe AR is the next-generation of entertainment.

In Toys, we have seen many AR applications come into the fray and still, none have become the behemoth TOTY (toy of the year) that many thought they would. The ultimate AR integration with toys is still yet to come.

Augmented Reality is the live or indirect view of a real-world physical environment on which computer-generated graphics are placed, usually on a smartphone or tablet. AR uses “triggers” to generate these animations on your smart device screen. Think of the triggers like a QR code that creates an image or animation it’s been programmed to display.

We have already seen multiple applications of AR in today’s toys.

So far, the education category is the most applicable for the technology. Companies like Augmentifyit have created a unique play pattern using AR. Their package contains only a deck of cards. Each of these cards feature trivia questions about outer space. The child can download their free app and then interact with the card by pointing their smart phone or tablet camera at the card to display the AR image of a planet, comet and more. Not a bad way to learn about the Solar System!

Lego is hopping on board with AR triggers on their packages to show kids what the final Lego model will look like through their smart phone or tablet projected above the package itself!

Some blaster companies have attempted to mount phones to their foam dart guns but so far, none have really been compelling enough to make an impact in the new AR toy category.

So the question is: Is it cool yet?

The real fact of the matter is this: in order to interact with Augmented Reality, you have to look at real life through a small screen. The beauty of Virtual Reality is full-immersion. With a head-mounted display, you have a 360-degree view and phone-free hands. With Augmented Reality, kids are forced to hold a phone in front of them to play, or prop it up in front of them with a tripod. This limits their ability to interact with the toy and stifles group interaction.

There may also be some hesitancy from parents to want their kids wandering the neighborhood with their phone in front of their face. After multiple accidents from nose-in-phone wanderers, Pokemon Go has shown us how distracting these AR games can be, and this may have an adverse effect on parent purchase decisions come Christmas.

Kids these days are exposed to the most unbelievable graphics in movies and video games. This level of computer graphics is just not possible yet on Augmented Reality apps. The app and play pattern will always be limited by the smart phone’s camera quality and processing power, so for now, it’s difficult to say when the graphics will be good enough.

So, when WILL it be cool?

Once the computer graphics improve and users are able to interact with the AR animations, the game will change. When you can poke, push, pull and battle your AR dinosaurs, kids will flock to the tech and the toy that gets it right. At the moment, the sensors in your standard smartphone or tablet are not advanced enough to process the depth, range and movement of each of your fingers and how they correspond to the AR image on the screen.

AR can be fun for one, but five kids huddled around a phone can get annoying real fast. The kids aren’t getting any smaller, so the screens definitely need to get bigger. But how can the screen get bigger and still allow the child to interact with the object in front of it? Seems like a problem without a solution.

The next big step that will bring true AR fun to kids are head-mounted goggles or glasses. Google Glass took a stab at that market years ago, but it will be awhile before the technology gets cheap enough to make it cost-effective enough for the toy industry.

AR Toys will one day be all the rage, but for the time being, the best toys are still the screen-free play patterns in standard reality, and maybe that’s a good thing.