I have been a keen Nabaztag user pretty much since they came out. My house is being graced by two of them, with Henriette (Nabaztag)  and Karlchen (Nabaztag/tag) adorning the office and living room. They advise us of the footy results over in Germany, tell us when email from the family arrives, give us their opinion on next days weather, play the story of the day from NPR, wriggle their ears spontaneously and sometimes just mysteriously glow.

As you undoubtedly can see, I’m a fan.

Nabaztag Antipodensis

Unfortunately the geniuses who designed the thing were never able to translate their brainpower into a working IT-infrastructure, so the Nabaztags’ performance was frequently hampered by spontaneous server crash, crummy code and a general laissez fair attitude to the whole back office thing. Due to the obvious problems the Nabaztags only ever achieved half of their promised functionality. Financially nothing really worked either, and so Violet, the company that produced them, went bankrupt as was being swallowed by Mindscape.

After this I expected my Nabaztags to fall asleep forever, but amazingly Mindscape actually seems to be putting some money into the bunny factory, and Violet’s website is now actually working and there is even talk of a new Bunny being released next year.

I am of course aware that these plasticky computer thingies are not particularly useful, but so is a dachshound or a cat, so I will keep them until their cute little ears fall off.

Not a Nabaztag.