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ActiMates are a discontinued series of interactive toys released by Microsoft Kids in September 1997. The toys are in the form of licensed dolls which can interact with episodes of their respective television series from 1997-2000 or on special ActiMates-compatible VHS tapes and computer games. The toys were marketed as educational tools and gave positive affirmations for correct answers from the user.
Microsoft released seven characters: Barney in 1997, Arthur, his sister D.W. in 1998 and the Teletubbies in 1999. Barney was the first to be released, was first displayed at the New York Toy Fair that year and became a success during the holiday season.
The dolls can interact with a television set and computer (the Teletubbies can't interact with the computer) using TV and PC packs. They can also be played standalone without the VCR and computer packs.
Three ActiMates Barney PC games released at launch, [1] [2] with more additional software to be released for Barney.
Microsoft discontinued the dolls in 2000 and lost the patent rights to the toys five years later.
However, despite the dolls and technology being discontinued in 2000, Teletubbies episodes were ActiMates-compatible up until 2001, the toys still interacted with reruns of their respective shows (from ActiMates-compatible years) during that time for a few more years, and Arthur and D.W. could still interact with Arthur VHS releases from 2000-2005 (releases that feature episodes from seasons 1-4). ActiMates Barney could also interact with airings of seasons 4-6 of Barney & Friends on PBS Kids Sprout.
Teletubbies is a British children's television series created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport for the BBC. The programme focuses on four differently coloured characters known as the Teletubbies, named after the television screens on their bellies. Recognised throughout popular culture for the uniquely shaped antenna protruding from the head of each character, the Teletubbies communicate through gibberish and were designed to bear resemblance to toddlers.
Arthur is an animated television series for children ages 4 to 8, developed by Kathy Waugh for PBS and produced by WGBH. The show is set in the fictional U.S. city of Elwood City and revolves around the lives of Arthur Read, an anthropomorphic aardvark, his friends and family, and their daily interactions with each other.
Boohbah is a British preschool television series created by Anne Wood and produced by Wood's company, Ragdoll Productions, in association with GMTV. It originally premiered on ITV on 14 April 2003. The series was later broadcast on Nick Jr. UK beginning on 2 April 2005.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 98, abbreviated commonly as FS98, is a flight simulator video game. It was released in September 1997 for Microsoft Windows.
Rescue Heroes are a line of action figures targeted towards preschool-age children, released by Fisher-Price. The line was first introduced in 1997, depicting various rescue personnel, such as firefighters, police officers, and construction workers, which included interchangeable tool packs that attached to the back of figures and featured various electronic or mechanical gimmicks. In 1999 an animated television series of the same name debuted. A film titled Rescue Heroes: The Movie was released in 2003.
Playskool is an American brand of educational toys and games for children. The former Playskool manufacturing company was a subsidiary of the Milton Bradley Company and was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Playskool's last remaining plant in the aforementioned city was shut down in 1984, and Playskool became a brand of Hasbro, which had acquired Milton Bradley that same year.
Play Along Toys was a Florida-based toy company, and a wholly owned division of Jakks Pacific.
Living Books is a series of interactive read-along adventures aimed at children aged 3–9. Created by Mark Schlichting, the series was mostly developed by Living Books for CD-ROM and published by Broderbund for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Two decades after the original release, the series was re-released by Wanderful Interactive Storybook for iOS and Android.
The Playroom is a video game first created in 1989 for DOS, Apple II and Macintosh computers. The game was compatible with the TouchWindow utility. It was ported to the Amiga and FM Towns computers in 1992 and 1994 respectively and then remade for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 1995. It was designed for ages 3 to 6 manufactured by Broderbund. A follow-up game titled The Treehouse came in 1991 as well as a sequel to this game, called The Backyard in 1993.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X is a 2006 flight simulation video game originally developed by Aces Game Studio and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Microsoft Windows. It is the sequel to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and the tenth installment of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, which was first released in 1982. It is built on an upgraded graphics rendering engine, showcasing DirectX 10 features in Windows Vista and was marketed by Microsoft as the most important technological milestone in the series at the time. FSX is the first version in the series to be released on DVD media.
Links is a series of golf simulation video games, first developed by Access Software, and then later by Microsoft after it acquired Access Software in 1999. Microsoft also produced its own series of golf games based on Links, under the title Microsoft Golf. The Links series was a flagship brand for Access, and was continued from 1990 to 2003. The first game in the series, Links: The Challenge of Golf, won Computer Gaming World's 1991 Action Game of the Year award.
Merchandise for the Thomas & Friends franchise has been produced to capitalize on the success of the television series Thomas & Friends. Whilst merchandise was produced alongside due to the popularity of the first of The Railway Series by the Rev. W. Awdry since 1945, and the original broadcast of the television series in 1984 in the United Kingdom, large numbers of manufacturers have sought to produce Thomas-branded items after the television series was broadcast in the United States and Japan.
Microsoft Corporation has been selling branded hardware since 1980, and developing devices in-house since 1982, when the Microsoft Hardware division was formed to design a computer mouse for use with Microsoft Word for DOS. Since then, Microsoft has developed computer hardware, gaming hardware and mobile hardware. It also produced drivers and other software for integrating the hardware with Microsoft Windows.
The American Girls Premiere is an educational computer game developed and published by The Learning Company for American Girl. The game allows players to create theatrical productions featuring characters from American Girl's Historical collection, along with scenes and other elements unique to each of the girls' respective time periods.
Teddybears is a British children's television programme broadcast on ITV from early 1998 to 2000, based on the books by Susanna Gretz. The show was about the life of five coloured teddy bears and their dog Fred. The show was filmed by Meridian Broadcasting. Journalists have compared Teddybears as being similar to and a rival of Teletubbies which was also produced around that time. However the series was targeted at older children.
Disney's Animated Storybook is a point-and-click adventure interactive storybook video game series based on Walt Disney feature animations and Pixar films that were released throughout the 1990s. They were published by Disney Interactive for personal computers for children ages four to eight years old. Starting from 1994, most of the entries in the series were developed by Media Station. They have the same plots as their respective films, though abridged due to the limited medium.
Toys-to-life is a video game feature using physical figurines or action figures to interact within the game. These toys use a near field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID), or image recognition data protocol to determine the individual figurine's proximity, and save a player's progress data to a storage medium located within that piece. It was one of the most lucrative branches of the video game industry especially during the late 1990s and 2010s, with the Skylanders franchise alone selling more than $3 billion worth over the course of four years.
The Arthur video games franchise was a series of learning and interactive story video games based on the American-Canadian children's TV show Arthur. The games were released in the 1990s and 2000s for PlayStation and Windows and Mac OS computers.
JumpStart Toddlers is a 1996 educational video game, the fourth within the JumpStart franchise. An enhanced version was released in 2000.
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