My friend Alphie the Robot

Earlier this week my jaw about dropped as I saw on a TV a commercial for the new and improved Alphie the Robot toy by Playskool.

My jaw dropped because I had the classic 80s version of this toy (dubbed as Alphie II) and the fact that they gave him up an update and recently brought him back was just... shocking! To be honest, I had nearly forgotten about the educational plastic robot toy that I loved so much as a kid, so seeing him incarnated again on TV nearly 20 years later was a nice welcome!

Originally introduced in the late 1970s and running on batteries, Alphie was a great educational toy for young kids as he came with different learning cards you could slide into his compartment and he would ask you different questions regarding the images on the card in which you would respond by pressing the different buttons next to the images on the card. Alphie would tell you if your answer was right or wrong. It was a pretty impressive toy for that era!

The original Alphie was blue and when the Alphie II was introduced in the 80s he got a little bit of a makeover - the 80s version (Alphie II) is the version that I had growing up.


 


I loved my Alphie robot - he taught me about letters, shapes, simple math, and colors.

The new 2010 version of Alphie has had another makeover, making him look a more modern and less "box-y" with a handle on top (I always carried him around by the arm-like handles he had), and comes with 30 cards (I think mine had 10 or less) and now sings in addition to having an electronic eye panel to help him interact more and seem more like a real robot.

I'm hoping to find my Alphie II somewhere at my parents house, although (now costing twice as much), we might just splurge and get baby Jay the new 2010 version at some point.

Did you have a Robot Alphie as a kid? What do you think of the new version?