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Unique Interactive Toys for Kids

Parents who want to give their children gifts that they'll come back to again and again often opt for interactive toys. By requiring the intellectual and/or creative input of the child, an interactive toy becomes a challenge rather than a piece of flashy, one-trick plastic. The best interactive toys help develop knowledge in a wide variety of areas, such as reading proficiency, science, art, music and engineering.

Educational Interactive Toys
- The Leap Frog Explorer Globe is a fun way for kids to learn geography. The globe comes with a stylus pen that names the country it touches and offers facts and indigenous music upon contact. The Explorer globe also offers pre-programmed games that give kids a chance to test their newfound knowledge.
  
  Leap Frog offers another interactive, stylus-based toy called The Tag Reading System. With these books, the stylus "reads" one of the 20 Reading System books, and guides children in word pronunciation and word recognition.
Musical Interactive Toys
- The Stylophone is a pocket-sized rudimentary synthesizer operated by running a stylus pen up and down a flat metal keyboard. The synthesizer makes adjustable buzzing and droning sounds that are amplified with the small built-in speaker.
  
  Blue Man Group Percussion Tubes are a highly unique, motion-sensing toy instrument composed of a set of little drums and tubes. By swinging the electric drum sticks and hitting the percussion pads, or by simply waving your hands over the tubes, various percussive sounds can be played and combined. The system has speakers built-in, but you can also connect it to your stereo, or connect to an MP3 player to accompany your favorite songs.
Artistic Interactive Toys
- The Crayola Glow Dome lets kids illuminate and display their artwork on the wall for all to see. Children draw on the globe itself, which is easily cleanable for future pictures, and then turn the rotating globe on and the room lights off. Their artwork is then projected onto the wall, where it scrolls along for their viewing pleasure.
  
  A Book of Artrageous Projects is exactly what its title implies, but with a little something extra: it's a book of art projects that comes with the supplies needed to complete the projects. Among the projects covered are small stained glass creations, collage work and painting.
Interactive Construction Toys
- Magnext is a line of construction sets in the same vein as Erector sets or Lego sets, except that the pieces are connected together by way of embedded magnets within the pieces. Many types of Magnext sets are offered, such as the rollercoaster-themed iCoaster and the Spheron set, with which children and build and use gravity-defying cars.
  
  For the robot-obsessed child, Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 allow children to build advanced robots with 32-bit microprocessor "brains." The microprocessors are Bluetooth compatible, allowing kids to control their robot creations via mobile phone. The robots also operate by reacting to movement, sound, light, touch and color via built-in sensors.

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