5-Minute Project: The WowWee Robotics Keychain

Beginning in March 2007, WowWee Robotics, the makers of the Robosapien line of robot toys, began including a familiar face inside McDonald's restaurant Happy Meals. For the price of a Happy Meal (nominally around $2), "boys meals" featured one of eight different WowWee Robotics toys. Conversely, the "girls" Happy Meal included a My Little Pony premium toy.

The eight robot toys were:

• Robosapien - #1; walking (mechanical)
• Roboraptor - #2; vocalizing (electronic)
• Robosapien V2 - #3; talking (electronic)
• Roboreptile - #4; rolling (mechanical)
• Robopet - #5; walking (mechanical)
• Roboraptor - #6; chomping (electronic)
• Robosapien V2 - #7; standing (mechanical)
• Roboreptile - #8; biting (electrical)

According to a source close to the production of these "nano" Robo toys, 60 million units were produced for distribution through McDonald's. Furthermore, this same source named the "walking" Robosapien as the most "clever" of them all. Collect all eight and "super size" yourself.

After you've had your fill of the entire Robosapien nanos menagerie, you might want to consider modding one of the toys for a more "mature" flavor. Let's remove the digital speech circuit from inside the talking Robosapien V2 nano and embed it inside a Serpac enclosure.

Enter the WowWee Robotics Keychain.

Step 1 How to Make a WowWee Robotics Keychain

Time: 5-minutes
Cost: $5.36
Difficulty: Easy

Parts List

• Robosapien V2 nano #3 (salvaged)
• Serpac Model CA-4 4-Button Ergonomic Keychain Enclosure (Digi-Key #SRCA4-4B-ND ;$5.36)

Comments

[thrashermanTotalDIY]

REAL:Y REALLY REALLY< OH THATS AMAZING(*sarcasm).... i never heard of it.

[bethehammer]

This is kinda cool. But what would be really cool is if you could hack the guts and record your own message on it and leave it in the bot body. I have a bunch of these "talking" toys around that my kid doesnt play with. It would be cool to record my own messages on them and have them hang out in my cube at work to entertain me.

[balisticjoe]

You could easily get a voice recorder from radio shack and hack it in. Make it record clean up your toys for your kid then they will listen.

[dudette_cool]

ooooooooo!! but you'd have to get MORE special stuffs.. hehe.

[dudette_cool]

its kinda hard.. i mean, you have to get special things & stuffs.

[przem]

Good use for MD stuff :)! As you have some free buttons on your WowWee, you can add a small LED+switch circuit and have a small torch.