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Toys

New $300 Kitchen Playset For Children Includes Amazon's Alexa (cnet.com) 52

Posted by EditorDavid from the Talky-Tina dept.
"Kids can play with Alexa in their very own $300 pretend kitchen and grocery store," CNET reports, "with the Amazon voice assistant dishing out cooking advice, shopping help and plenty of goofy toddler humor." The Alexa 2-in-1 Kitchen and Market, from toymaker KidKraft, is making its debut at this weekend's New York Toy Fair... It uses a mix of RFID sensors and Bluetooth to tell Alexa which pretend food items kids are buying and cooking... Alexa speaks only when a sensor on the play set is activated. Put a toy hot dog into the pot on the stove, and Alexa knows you're cooking hot dogs. Kids hear the splash sound effect, and Alexa alerts when the hot dogs are done cooking and to hurry up and get the buns. "If they get cold, they will be chili dogs," she says...

The accessories that come with the kitchen and market, which include fake food, cookware and a credit card, are fitted with RFID chips, and sensors can tell which items are at the register, stovetop or cutting board. The play set then relays that info to the smart speaker via Bluetooth. So, if a kid places lettuce on the market scanner, it could prompt Alexa to say, "Lettuce! Are we making a salad?" And if a kid says, "Yes," Alexa will say, "Great! I love salad. Maybe get some avocado, too."
Engadget reports that once you install an Echo dot, "it will play games with your children and instruct them on how to make the best fake hot dog ever." And there's inevitably a game where Alexa tells your kids what to do: There's plenty of freeform play to be had, but to take advantage of Alexa's real capabilities a kid has to make use of the included "recipe cards." They're not real recipes with ingredients and instructions. Instead it's just a picture of the food the child wants to make, and they insert the card into a special reader on the counter to start the process of preparing it with Alexa's help. Alexa will instruct the child on whether to grab a pot or a pan, if it needs to be filled with water, and whether any ingredients need to be cut on the tiny chopping board. If the requested food isn't in the pantry, never fear: There's a store on the other side...

Unsurprisingly, the KidKraft 2-in-1 Alexa Kitchen and Market will be an Amazon exclusive when it launches some time this year. And the price? A hefty $300.
Tom's Guide calls the playset "clever --and also really creepy."

"On one hand, it's a screen-free, interactive experience... But there are a few concerns that a toy of this budding breed creates. I can't help but question the social implications of making Alexa a child's on-demand playmate."
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New $300 Kitchen Playset For Children Includes Amazon's Alexa More

New $300 Kitchen Playset For Children Includes Amazon's Alexa

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  • Normalization (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Grim Reefer ( 1162755 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @08:27PM (#59758720)
    I don't think I would want this if I had kids that were young enough for it. I don't have a smart speaker in my house and don't think it's a great idea to normalize them. If kids grow up and want them, I guess that's ok, but I find it odd to practically indoctrinate them as toddlers.
    • If you don't want your kids indoctrinated, You shouldn't have TV(s) in your house. The only purpose of a TV is to sell stuff. That's indoctrination. It's also propaganda. Think about it.
      • I've never bought an interconnected TV, so the huge difference for me is the TV is a one way tube. Alexa is a two way tube spying on the children. Creepy. Much creepier in my humble opinion than watching (or channel surfing during) an ad.
        • One-way tubes are less creepy, but they still sell stuff via commercials...

          • One-way tubes are less creepy, but they still sell stuff via commercials...

            That's what pays for the programs to be made.

            • To the parent's point about interconnected TVs, though, you're more likely to expose the children to propaganda via advertisement than, say, a Netflix subscription, where at most they'd recognize relevant toy tie-ins at the store. So the internet connectivity of the TV isn't inherently problematic.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Old school TVs and programming, mostly. I see commercials once or twice a year. The Super Bowl (my doing), and the Oscars (I hate that shit, but my wife watched them this year). Other than that, I don't ever see commercials. In fact, those two events reinforced how horrible broadcast (or "free" streams with ads) is and I'd never subject my child to that.

    • Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @01:49AM (#59759450) Journal
      You are thinking about this wrong. The point is not to indoctrinate the kids or even advertize to them - doing that would put Amazon in the legal minefield. I'm sure the point is to mine your kids for data which you can then use to advertize to the parents.

      Expect parents to suddenly see ads for their kids favourite food that they have just been pretend-cooking or toys that their kids mentioned while playing etc. This will avoid all the child-advertizing laws while simultaneously advertizing to those with the money who make the decisions.

  • Does it have a built-in screen with Wiggles or Barney videos?

  • Make sure you get the kids used to the weird stuff early ... This won't even fall under "screen time" limitations.

  • ... if a kid says, "Yes," ...

    We've been down this road before, with internet-connected microphones:

    The Cayla doll [bbc.com] also had no security, causing it to be banned in Germany and France, then withdrawn from sale.

  • Seems like it should be free.

    Also, I'm curious if any lawsuits could conceivably come out of this. One could argue that you're giving away your children's privacy by purchasing this; and it's established law in the US that a parent can't sign away his/her children's rights...

    • ... Seems like it should be free. ... --- I might suggest that Amazon is using that $300 fee as insurance against the likely law-suits that they may expect to face.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        No, if they were worried about avoiding lawsuits, they'd just give it away for free. You can't sue somebody who gives you something for free. You have to pay something for something, in order to sue for it. It's called "consideration".

        • That's not *exactly* how that works...

        • Please tell me that guy doesn't know what he's saying and that the US laws are not THAT insane.

          • The laws aren't that insane. Otherwise, I could give him some poison and tell him it is candy. Obviously, I could not claim immunity from various statues because there is no exchange of consideration. Such an exchange is required for a legal contract (in most cases) but absence of a contract does not shield one from prosecution. Even in the case of a free Alexa Kitchen, I don't think you could claim there was no contract, since consideration does not require a purchase. In this case the recipient's consider
  • I'm Santa Claus.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  • This is not going to end well. (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Sunday February 23, 2020 @09:31PM (#59758902)
    I don't know how else to characterize it.

  • Breaking the spirit of COPPA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter AT tedata DOT net DOT eg> on Sunday February 23, 2020 @10:06PM (#59758976) Journal

    This is what we get when lazy, polarized, ignorant lawmakers don't get to work on preventing Big Data from getting their hands on children.

    But we have a law that was passed 20 years ago to keep companies from doing this. It's called COPPA, a.k.a. the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act [wikipedia.org]. It prohibits websites from collecting data on children under the age of 13 without strict limitations on what they can do with that data.

    So how the hell is this -any- different? Oh, I get it. Gotta read the article, where it says, "It doesn't have Alexa built-in directly; instead the smarts come from an Echo speaker you add yourself." Sneaky little weasels. When the parents buy it, Amazon can make a really deceptive claim that they're not responsible, especially when it's not Amazon making the toy.

    But look at the bloody Alexa Privacy Notice [amazon.com]: Are Children Allowed to Use Amazon Services? Amazon does not sell products for purchase by children. We sell children's products for purchase by adults...We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 without the consent of the child's parent or guardian.

    Oh, so because the parent "consents", simply by buying the product and performing an EULA click-thru, it doesn't count? Like hell it doesn't. EULA's don't supersede federal law. It's still a corporation collecting data from kids under the age of 13 for the sake of marketing. The FTC should shut this shit down, and Congress needs to reauthorize COPPA to include these smart systems and any other toy that's engineered to collect data on our kids.

    • Here is a crazy idea. Stop trying to control and police the world in a futile rage and instead just do not buy the fucking product!

      • Stop trying to control and police the world in a futile rage and instead just do not buy the fucking product!

        But what if someone else who the child interacts with buys the fucking product? Such as the daycare or the kindergarten?

  • kill your brother.

  • I just bought one. Thanks Slashdot for the info.

  • How do children in this age-range view Alexa? Do they get it is not a real person? Do they trust it or not?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      It knows more than them, it speaks with confidence, it's an authority figure.

      Still, it could be worse. It will be worse. "The lamb goes 'baaa, please don't eat me', maybe you should have some nice chickpea and lentil soup instead?"

  • Some stranger listening in on my kid and recording all they say.

    If that doesn't creep you out, nothing will.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      If that doesn't creep you out, nothing will.

      Apparently, many, many people cannot be creeped out.
    • Didn't you see the ad where a kid goes to college and loving dad gives her an Alexa if she needs anything, he leaves and she plays "dad's playlist". I cannot imagine giving unknown people access to my kid's formative years, listening to her conversations, hearing her parties, even those down moments where life isn't going her way and she's unhappy. Imagine the psychographic profile that could be assessed...makes "clicks on cat photos" look very tame and one dimensional. I love tech, but there aren't any
  • To play devil's advocate, I would not be so sure that this whole system is worse than the parents and playmates it replaces. Not all kids live in perfect conditions.

  • "If they get cold, they will be chili dogs," she says.

    Actually, it should be "chilly dogs". The joke is that the two words sound alike (homophones). That does not change the fact that they are two different words. A dog that is getting cold is chilly, not chili.

    As you were.

  • Nobody lost their shit when we had pull string toys that would say stuff. It was entertaining for little kids to hear a voice. Sure that little talking baby seemed demonically possessed when it giggled, but terrifying children is one of the few pleasures a toy maker has in life.

    • The little plastic record inside of those dolls have nothing on the opening of the Gates of Hell when a Speak and Spell got low on it's batteries.

  • Get 'em hooked or at least destroy inhibitions about using the product while they're young, then they'll be customers as adults.
  • Who goes to grocery stores anymore? Cheaper and easier to have delivered.

  • Wait until someone at Amazon 'accidentally' misconfigures the server, so now your kid is ordering real groceries instead of pretend ones. All being charged to mommy and daddy's not-pretend credit card.

  • Wait until this kitchen allows your kid to buy groceries with pretend money that is bought by real money by the parents. Maybe add a virtual cat who just loves his Num-nums. He loves his Num-nums so much, he will want more and more, and he will be meowing endlessly, goading your kid into haranguing you to buy more play money so the cat will stop it's pained meows and happily enjoy it's Num-nums.

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