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IZ (toy)
Encyclopedia
Since its release it has been available in three color schemes, green/orange, dark blue/light blue and red/yellow.
iZ was developed by Roger Shiffman, who also created the Giga Pets, 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 Poo-Chi
Poo-Chi
Poo-Chi is a robot dog, created by Tiger Toys after the success of the Furby. It is one of the first generations of robopet toys. Poo-Chi was originally designed by artist Samuel James Lloyd and manufactured by Sega Toys...
toys. It was explicitly said during the development phase that a "new 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...
" was the aim. iZ is designed to seem like it has a life of its own and does things out of its user's control when there is interaction with it.
Modes of operation
Since the iZ is such an abstract kind of toy the easiest way to understand it is by learning what you can do with it.The iZ has a few methods for input. First, as mentioned, it has an audio jack to connect other audio devices. It has two ears that are twistable and a touch-sensitive tentacle
Tentacle
A tentacle or bothrium is one of usually two or more elongated flexible organs present in animals, especially invertebrates. The term may also refer to the hairs of the leaves of some insectivorous plants. Usually, tentacles are used for feeding, feeling and grasping. Anatomically, they work like...
, called a flicker, on its head. On top of this it also has five buttons placed on different places on its colorful belly. All the input methods except the audio jack are colored in a secondary color to raise its affordance
Affordance
An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling...
. The iZ's three legs are also adjustable, but these do not generate any input.
For output the iZ has a built in speaker, a nose that lights up in different colors and two eyes driven by small motors making them able to move up and down.
When another audio device is connected to the iZ it acts as a speaker but also overlays some of its own sound effects on top of the sound from the audio device. When overlaying its own sound effects it also moves its eyes and lights up its nose. By pressing the left side of iZ belly the sound effects will be turned off and iZ will only act as a regular speaker.
When no other audio device is connected iZ has three modes of operation; Play, DJ and WZIZ FM.
In Play mode, which is the startup mode, iZ lets you compose your own music by manipulating his inputs. Each ear corresponds to one audio track, the belly controls the drum track and tempo, and the flicker can be hit for iZ to generate sound effects. iZ randomly adds his own flavour to the track by overlaying witty comments or radio noise.
When in DJ mode iZ evolves the track himself by changing one feature of the track at a time. If the user doesn't like the current music iZ outputs, the belly can be pressed to force iZ to instantly make a change. No interaction is allowed in this mode, so when the user tries any input which will change the track a simple sound is played to indicate that it registered the input but won't react to it.
As stated in iZ's manual "Although he is not a radio, he thinks he is". In WZIZ FM mode, iZ creates a completely new track every time it makes a change and inserts a noise to simulate the tuning of radio stations between the tracks. If you adjust the ears, which are supposed to be the antenna, you make iZ create a new random track instantly.
iZ Cartoon
Zizzle and DIC EntertainmentDiC Entertainment
DIC Entertainment was an international film and television production company. In addition to animated television shows such as Ulysses 31 , Inspector Gadget , The Littles , The Real Ghostbusters , Captain Planet and the Planeteers , and the first two seasons of the English adaptation of...
created a direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...
iZ cartoon, iZ and the Zizzles in 2007. The trailer could be viewed on the Zizzle website.