Tiger Electronics
Encyclopedia
- Tiger Electronics is not to be confused with the appliance maker Tiger CorporationTiger CorporationTiger Corporation is a Japanese multinational manufacturer and marketer of vacuum flasks and consumer electronics including electric water boilers and rice cookers. It has subsidiaries in China, Taiwan, and the United States. -History:...
, the electronics retailer Tiger DirectTiger DirectTiger Direct is a direct online and catalog retailer of computers and consumer electronics. It is a Systemax subsidiary. Its headquarters are in Fountainbleau, Florida.-Overview:...
or the producer of GizmondoGizmondoThe Gizmondo is a handheld gaming console which was released by Tiger Telematics in March 2005. The electronics design was undertaken by Plextek Limited and the industrial design by Rick Dickinson....
, Tiger TelematicsTiger TelematicsTiger Telematics or Tiger, was a Swedish electronics company, best known for the failed Gizmondo handheld game console.-History:In 2000, Carl Freer formed Eagle Eye Scandinavian, a small electronics distribution business in Sweden...
.
Tiger Electronics is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
toy
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
manufacturer, best known for its handheld LCD games, the Furby
Furby
A Furby was a popular electronic robotic toy resembling a hamster/owl-like creature which went through a period of being a "must-have" toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998, with continual sales until 2000...
, and Giga Pet
Giga Pet
Giga Pets are a series of virtual pets. They were first created and released in 1997 and re-released in 2006 by Tiger Electronics, now a division of Hasbro. They were one of the first virtual pets to be released in the United States....
s. When Tiger was an independent company, Tiger Electronics Inc., its headquarters were in Vernon Hills, Illinois
Vernon Hills, Illinois
Vernon Hills is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 20,120 at the 2000 census, and estimated to be 23,957 as of 2005...
.
Randy Rissman and Roger Shiffman founded the company in 1978. It started with low-tech items like phonographs, but then began developing handheld electronic game
Handheld electronic game
----Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive electronic games, often miniaturized versions of video games. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose screen made up of a grid of small pixels, they...
s and teaching toys. Prominent among these was "K28, Tiger's Talking Learning Computer", (1984) that was sold worldwide by K-Mart and other chain stores. Tiger also achieved success with many simple handheld electronics games like "Electronic Bowling" and other titles based on licenses, such as "RoboCop
RoboCop
RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
", "Terminator", and "Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...
". An early 90's hit was the variable speed portable cassette/microphone combo Talkboy
Talkboy
The Talkboy was a portable variable speed cassette player and recorder manufactured by Tiger Electronics in the early 1990s. Much like other Tiger Electronics devices of the era, this device was primarily marketed to children and teens....
(first seen in the 1992 movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is a 1992 American Christmas comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. It is the second film in the Home Alone series and the direct sequel to Home Alone. The film stars Macaulay Culkin in the lead role as Kevin McCallister, while...
), followed by the Brain Warp
Brain Warp
Brain Warp is an electronic audio game made by Tiger Electronics and released in 1996. Players follow the spoken instructions of the game unit by choosing the correct number or color. Its catch phrase is "If you don't keep up with me, you're finished!"....
and the Brain Shift. It also licensed the "Lazer Tag
Lazer Tag
Lazer Tag is a brand name for the infrared pursuit game generically known as "laser tag," "lasertag," or "lazertag."The brand name was created by the toy company Worlds Of Wonder in 1986, appearing at approximately the same time as the home version of the Photon brand.The Lazer Tag brand name was...
" brand from its inventors, Shoot the Moon Products, which was born from the remnants of the Worlds of Wonder
Worlds of Wonder (toy company)
Worlds of Wonder or WoW was a 1980s American toy company, founded by former Atari employees, including Don Kingsborough and Mark Robert Goldberg.Their products included:* Teddy Ruxpin, a story telling bear, in 1985...
company. Tiger also produced a version of Lights Out
Lights Out (game)
Lights Out is an electronic game, released by Tiger Toys in 1995. The game consists of a 5 by 5 grid of lights. When the game starts, a random number or a stored pattern of these lights is switched on. Pressing any of the lights will toggle it and the four adjacent lights...
around 1995. In 1997 it also produced a quaint fishing game called Fishing Championship, in the shape of a reduced fishing rod.
In 1995 Tiger acquired the Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
toy division. Tiger agreed to manufacture and market electronic toys for Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
and Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
.
Tiger has made two cartridge based systems. The first and less technically sophisticated was known as the R-Zone
R-Zone
The R-Zone was a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Tiger Electronics, released in 1995. The R-Zone was a largely unsuccessful handheld console and would only be manufactured for a short period of time...
. It employed red LCD cartridges, which were projected via backlight onto a reflective screen that covered one of the player's eyes. All R-Zone games were adapted from existing Tiger handheld LCDs. The second was the game.com
Game.com
The Game.com is a handheld game console released by Tiger Electronics in September 1997. It featured many new ideas for handheld consoles and was aimed at an older target audience, sporting PDA-style features and functions such as a touch screen and stylus...
handheld system, which was meant to compete with Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
's Game Boy
Game Boy
The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...
and boasted such novel features as a touchscreen and limited Internet connectivity. Ultimately, it was a failure, with only 20 games produced.
Tiger Electronics has been part of the Hasbro
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
toy company since 1998. Hasbro, previously shy of high-tech toys, was very interested in the development of the cuddly "Furby
Furby
A Furby was a popular electronic robotic toy resembling a hamster/owl-like creature which went through a period of being a "must-have" toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998, with continual sales until 2000...
". With Hasbro's support, Tiger was able to rush through the development process and get the Furby on the shelves for the 1998 holiday season, during which it was a runaway hit -- the "it" toy of the 1998 and 1999 seasons.
Tiger also created the Giga Pets line of handheld electronic "pets" to compete with the popular Japanese Tamagotchi
Tamagotchi
The is a handheld digital pet, created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. It was first sold by Bandai in 1996 in Japan. As of 2010, over 76 million Tamagotchis have been sold world-wide...
.
The company has since become one of the most prominent producers of electronic toys, chosen to produce toys based on a wide variety of licenses, including Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
, Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
, Barney
Barney & Friends
Barney and Friends, also referred to by HiT Entertainment as Barney the Friendly Dinosaur, is an independent children's television show produced in the United States, aimed at children from ages 1-8...
, Arthur
Arthur (TV series)
Arthur is an American/Canadian animated educational television series for children, created by Cookie Jar Group and WGBH for the Public Broadcasting Service...
, Winnie the Pooh, Franklin the Turtle, Neopets
Neopets
Neopets is a virtual pet website that was launched by Adam Powell and Donna Williams on November 15, 1999. Two years after the web site was launched, Adam Powell and Donna Williams sold a majority share to a consortium of investors led by Doug Dohring. On June 20, 2005, Viacom bought Neopets, Inc...
, Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...
, Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...
and many more.
In 2000, Tiger was licensed to provide a variety of electronics with the Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
brand name, including digital camera
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
s, webcam
Webcam
A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi.Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera...
s, and a "Hits Downloader" that made music from the Internet (mp3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
s, etc.) accessible through Tiger's assorted "HitClips
HitClips
HitClips is a digital audio player created by Tiger Electronics that plays ultra-low-fi stereo one minute clips of pop songs. There is a version for four year olds called KidClips. HitClips were first distributed by McDonalds when they did *NSYNC and Britney Spears. In 2002, Hitclips earned Tiger...
" players. Tiger also produces the long lasting I-Dog Interactive Music Companion, the ZoomBox - a portable 3-in-1 home entertainment projector that will play DVDs, CDs and connects to most gaming systems, the VideoNow
VideoNow
The VideoNow is a personal video player distributed by Hasbro through its Tiger Electronics subsidiary. It is designed for children and operates using unusually sized 4" PVD Discs. The discs allow for about 30 minutes of video, so they are well suited for children's television shows. Video...
personal video player, the VCamNow
VCamNow
The Hasbro/Tiger Electronics VCamNow is a digital tapeless camcorder targeted to children. It is designed as a complement to the VideoNow series of personal video players, and comes with editing software allowing users to create VideoNow videos on Microsoft Windows systems. It can also be used to...
digital camcorder
Camcorder
A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...
, and the ChatNow
ChatNow
ChatNow is a mobile phone-like walkie-talkie developed by Hasbro's Tiger Electronics division for the preteen market. It includes simple digital photography and text message functionality and transmits using the Family Radio Service UHF radio band...
line of kid-oriented two-way radio
Two-way radio
A two-way radio is a radio that can both transmit and receive , unlike a broadcast receiver which only receives content. The term refers to a personal radio transceiver that allows the operator to have a two-way conversation with other similar radios operating on the same radio frequency...
s.
The continuing development of Furby-type technology has led to the release of the "FurReal" line of toys in 2003.
See also
- SuperplexusSuperplexusPerplexus is a 3-D ball-in-a-maze puzzle or labyrinth game enclosed in a transparent plastic sphere. By twisting and turning the sphere, players attempt to maneuver a small steel ball through an intricate maze composed of 100 steps along narrow plastic tracks...
3D maze ball toy.