Instead of harpooning a whale for samples, wouldn’t it be easier to just collect their snot using an R/C helicopter? More

Lego biped robots are a dime a dozen, even while some look pretty sweet . This one is special: It’s the first walking Lego robot. And, unlike your usual feet-dragging toy robots, it actually walks by raising its feet . This is definitely not easy to do with Lego or any other material. Maybe this guy should start thinking about building a Big Dog . [ Flickr via Brothers Brick ]

If you’ve got $22 and know a deserving kid, these LEGO Star Wars watches are about as adorable as gifts get. If you’ve got $30 and consider yourself deserving, there are slightly less cute adult versions, too. [ StarWarsShop via Geekologie ]

Remember those cheap green plastic army men ? The ones that were in Toy Story ? And in your grubby toddler hands? Now available in a LEGO version for $11, they’re ready to melt your meta-meta-heart…with a lighter. Medic! [ LEGO ]

I’ve played with my fair share of LEGOs, but I never actually envied the little guys until I saw Dave DeGobbi’s Crawler Town, a work as impressively conceived as it is constructed. I’d forfeit bendable elbows to live in it. It sort of reminds me of those old books on a single building—Castles or Pyramids or what have you—where you could look at the huge, detailed illustrations and imagine dozens of little stories unfolding in every corner. Attention is even given to the world in which the Crawler Town dwells. As DeGobbi describes it: Crawler town roams the barren wastes of a post steam-punk world after cataclysmic climate change do to excessive coal use. Several such cities exist but Crawler town is the most popular due to the Aero 500 hydrogen fuel cell Air races that are held.

If your children are a bit too at ease with insects, grabbing ants or putting ladybugs into their tiny chocolate-ringed mouths as they are wont to do, introduce your little ones to bugs’ terrifying, too-fast-to-keep-track-of nature with HexBug Nano Newtons . We’re not unfamiliar with HexBug’s line of robotic creepy crawlies, including crabs , ants , worms and more—but the new Nano Newton might be the creepiest of the bunch. Whereas the other ones are big enough in size that they are discernible as harmless plastic imitations of the real thing, the Newtons—now coming in collectible test tube packages with various different genetic “mutations” (read: colors)—are so tiny that at first glance they could just as well be radioactive cockroaches. And they act like it. The Nano Newtons doesn’t so much move as they freak the fuck out, skidding around on their miniature rubber feet and bumping into things like real cockroaches would—if you gave them each a human-sized cup of coffee. They can even flip themselves over if they end up on their backs

If your children are a bit too at ease with insects, grabbing ants or putting ladybugs into their tiny chocolate-ringed mouths as they are wont to do, introduce your little ones to bugs’ terrifying, too-fast-to-keep-track-of nature with HexBug Nano Newtons . We’re not unfamiliar with HexBug’s line of robotic creepy crawlies, including crabs , ants , worms and more—but the new Nano Newton might be the creepiest of the bunch. Whereas the other ones are big enough in size that they are discernible as harmless plastic imitations of the real thing, the Newtons are so tiny that at first glance they could just as well be radioactive cockroaches. And they act like it. The Nano Newtons doesn’t so much move as they freak the fuck out, skidding around on their miniature rubber feet and bumping into things like real cockroaches would—if you gave them each a human-sized cup of coffee. They can even flip themselves over if they end up on their backs.

The flagship toy in Jakks Pacific’s new SpyNet line is the Secret Mission Video Watch , a piece of wearable tech that lets spies-in-training covertly record video and audio and upload those sensitive materials to a secure website for further analysis. For my generation, Macaulay Culkin’s use of the Talkboy in Home Alone 2 was the single most glorious realization of usable spy technology that we had ever seen. Following in its lineage, the chunky SpyNet watch—no, I don’t have baby hands—actually gives kids real spying capabilities: the ability to shoot up to 30 minutes of video, 2 hours of audio, or 2000 pictures with a built-in camera for playback on the watch’s color screen. OK, it’s not going to be HD-quality, “enhance, enhance ” type stuff, but from the demo I saw, the recorded footage is definitely good enough for some low-stakes familial blackmail.

With the era of the tablet upon us, eBook readers were the gadget du jour in a technological moment that is about to pass, if it hasn’t already. But your kids don’t know that, now do they? The VTech FLiP, an eBook Reader geared towards preschoolers, is definitely a worthy gadget for a budding bookworm and might just pack enough bells and whistles to engage a text-ambivalent tot. The Flip looks just like Mommy and Daddy’s eBook Readers but with a see-thru flip cover and a grabbable bubbly border. There are two colorways—a blue and a pink—and each has a matching backpack accessory that can be purchased separately

Unlike Robert Downey Jr.’s take on Iron Man , this version, remote controlled by a wrist-mounted repulsor gauntlet, apparently does not like cameras. It shot me. It moves pretty quick across obstacle-free surfaces, but it’s a bit too clunky for a real roller derby. It’s $50, which is pricey, but it does shoot missiles at people. Toy Fair is the annual event where we get to completely regress back to childhood and check out all of the awesome toys coming out for the rest of the year. And well, we love toys