Robotic Toys by WowWee

WowWee Ltd is a Hong Kong based company founded by two Canadian brothers, Richard and Peter Yanofsky in 1982 originally as an research & development company for other toy makers, Producing products such as Power Rangers Power Gloves and the Talking Tots dolls.

In 1987, the company changed their focus and started building toys themselves. There goal was to create sophisticated, intelligent robots that would interact with their environment and eventually with humans in an autonomous way. WowWee first produced a number of products including a robotic dog (MegaByte), T-Rex, and the Animaltronics and Dinotronics lines of remote control animals. WowWee was later sold to American multinational toy and board game corporation Hasbro in 1998.

The creative genus behind the WowWee products is Mark Tilden, a Robotic physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory best known for inventing B.E.A.M robotic (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics) robotics that primarily uses simple analogue circuits instead of a microprocessor to produce the most basic designs for that robot to performing the task for which it was designed.

Mark Tilden, was reportedly hired as a consultant by Peter Yanofsky after noticing him on the Discovery Channel, He finally joined WowWee in 2001 producing the B.I.O. Bug. Unfortunately, B.I.O Bug was not as successful as either WowWee or Hasbro would have liked. After joining WowWee in 2001, Tilden also focused on developing Robosapien. The project was canceled several times and a long with limitation place on WowWee by Hasbro, WowWee ended the partnership in 2003. Robosapien was finally released in 2004 and over 6 million units were reportedly sold in the first 5 months since the launch. Mark Tilden continued to develop The Robosapien humanoid series evolving to include the Robosapien V2 robot (2005), Roboreptile (2006), the RS Media (2006) and the RoboQuad (2007).

In 2007 WowWee released the"FlyTech Dragonfly" , a remote control flying ornithopter developed with inventor Sean Frawley. The Dragonfly was named as one of the inventions of the year by TIME magazine in 2007. The success of the Dragonfly led to other flying toys being developed by WowWee under the Flytech brand such as the Bladestar, (a remote controlled helicopter) the first flying toy with sensor-based navigation and the Butterfly, a wind-up ornithopter aimed at younger children.

In 2007 WowWee Robots became so popoular their were featured in McDonald's Happy Meal's worldwide and in museums and exhibits across the United States. At the 2008 International Consumer Electroci Show in Las Vegas, several new products were announced including the Rovio and Femsapien. Today WowWee continues amaze and delight millions of Robot fan around the world with there innovative and entertaining creations.