Another holiday season, another robot toy that offers a tantalizing glimpse of a future robot toy/robot domestic that sucks less. This year’s robot of record is the Tomy i-SOBOT, a mini-humanoid that retails for a fairly affordable $299.99 ($243 at Amazon).

For those who have been tracking robot evolution in your spare time, mini-humanoid robots and robot competitions involving them are all the rage in Asia. But these bots usually cost thousands of dollars. So it’s something significant that Tomy has been able to produce a reasonably full-featured humanoid, with 17 tiny servo-motors and gyro stabilization, in a robot at this price level. I-Sobot comes with 200 pre-programmed routines, a 200-word vocabulary, and the ability to be controlled via a remote and programmed via button sequences on that remote. All in a robot that’s only 6.5″ tall (the smallest commercial robot in the world).

So why am I not more enthusiastic? I’m not sure. A lot of it has to do with judging my and my son’s excitement level. We’re both big geeks and I’m a robot freak, so you’d think something this cool and affordable would really have us fighting over it and spending too much time messing with it. There was an initial flush of excitement and a few hours of messing around, but i-SOBOT has sat idle on the coffee table for days now. He gobbled up the three batteries we fed him initially and neither of us have been motivated enough to change them. In thinking about bang for the buck in buying toys like i-SOBOT for Christmas, I always think about the depth of the item, how long into the year, and beyond, this item is likely to hold the recipent’s attention. For something like LEGO MINDSTORMS, you know that the $250 you spend is going to go into a building set that can be used, reused, expanded upon and hacked. With i-SOBOT, I wonder. The product is still too new to know about the extent of the hackability and the user community it may inspire. It’d be awesome if you could create programs for i-SOBOT on your computer and load them into the bot and add/replace parts.

One encouraging sign is that the Robodance software, which was designed to add extra programming and movement functionality to the Robospaien line of robots, is being updated (pre-testing phase) to include remote programming of the i-SOBOT using the Nintendo Wiimote (gestural programming!). This is a great way of expanding the options (and playtime) for i-SOBOT. Information on Robodance 4 can be found here. This development bodes well for future hacks for i-SOBOT.

So, what’s the bottom line here? I’d say, if you’re buying for somebody who’s really into robots, especially someone who enjoys pushing the limits of what they can do, it might be worth the investment. (Or someone who’s long lusted after the much more expensive Robo-One humanoids.) If you think your recipient is likely to lose interest after a few hours of play, a cheaper robot toy, such as the WowWee RoboPet or Tekno the Robotic Puppy, might be a better way to go.