You remember Playdough, right? Of course, you do. In fact, you can probably even recall its scent perfectly. Man, it smelled good. Well, a UK-based company called Technology Will Save Us recently launched a Kickstarter for the next generation in toddler’s clay: Dough Universe, a series of Playdough kits equipped with sound, lights, and movement.
Each kit is priced at $40 and features different electrical functions. The Squishy Sounds kit allows the tots to craft musical instruments and play them, while the Bright Creatures set encourages you to build your own light-up critters. The Electro Machines line might be the most functional – it comes with actual moving parts. It’s all literally child’s play. Until you realize that all three of these could conceivably be combined. But how the heck does this stuff even work?
Actually, the dough comes with a handheld controller and a companion app. The controller, as would logically be expected, is used to operate the functional parts of Dough Universe. The app includes instructions, examples, and games to get those creative juices flowing. The downside – the controllers aren’t universal, for example, the light kit controller only operates the light kit playdough.
Speaking of specifics, each set includes three pots of playdough and a number of the actual working parts that will make up the innards of the doughy creations. You could still mix and match, it’s just that operating the playdough machine of terrible doom will take a tiny bit of problem-solving. A skill that goes hand-in-hand with learning to make stuff.
Want it all? You can buy a bundle that includes all three packs for $100, or a pack that comes with 36 dough pots for $300. The $100 bundle is currently the most popular, but that’s only if the Kickstarter campaign reaches its funding goal. With just under a month until the end, it’s sitting at under $20,000 of the $50,000 goal.
