Mattel is about to launch a toy that will brighten the lives of some dog lovers — but act as a sign of the coming apocalypse for folks who aren’t so keen on cute pet gimmicks. It’s called Puppy Tweet, and it gives your dog the ability to send Twitter updates about what he or she is doing.
Well, sort of.
The collar detects when your dog moves or make a sound, then randomly selects one of 500 pre-written tweets to post to twitter. Your dog has to be within a reasonable distance of the room with your computer in it, though; the tweets are sent wirelessly from the collar to a USB receiver that has to be plugged into a supported Internet-connected device.
Since the selection is random, the tweets don’t really represent what your dog is doing. It’s more a placebo that reminds you that your beloved pet is out there doing something, whatever it is. They’re cute though. A couple of examples: “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing, and . . . OOUUUCHH!” and “I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home.”
It sounds like it would get redundant, but Mattel Brands President Neil Freidman said “”Eventually it will certainly repeat itself, but people repeat themselves, too.” True enough.
We’d be remiss not to mention when seeing this that it resembles the talking dog collar in the Pixar film Up — everybody else has mentioned it! Sadly, Puppy Tweets isn’t nearly as advanced as that one.
