Pleo goes the way of the dodo bird

I was finally proven wrong in my criticism of the robot dinosaur toy Pleo and its maker Ugobe. It turns out that Ugobe indeed built an exact replica of a dinosaur, a real life form; so exact in fact, that Pleo went extinct just like the real dinosaurs. In retrospect, Pleo's demise can be attributed to a number of reasons that I will summarize shortly. In the meantime, just in case that you haven't heard it yet, Ugobe filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy a few days ago. The company had to let go all of its employees (unfortunately) and is currently in the process of liquidating its assets.

I said since the introduction of Pleo in 2006 that the product was over hyped. It definitely created a niche following among some early technology adopters but it never hit the big time even though it was making huge headlines in all major (and not) publications and TV shows. It didn't take long, however, before people started to complain that their robots weren't capable of doing more than walk around slowly and make random sounds; needless to say, the learning that a Pleo was supposed to be capable of over time did not live up to expectation. Even so, Ugobe was successful in selling about 100,000 of these toys that originally retailed for $350. Recently Amazon reduced Pleo's price to $250 but it was too little too late fro the ambitious robotic toy.

To a large degree, Ugobe fell victim to the recent economic downturn that has hurt many businesses. Their offering was too expensive for a toy in an economic climate that will be remembered for huge job losses and a shut credit market. Failing to improve their original offering of 2006 didn't help Ugobe either. There were rumors of a newer, better version of Pleo that never materialized or maybe it never did because bankruptcy hit too soon. The personality upgrades made available via the official website also fell short of expectations.

The company says that they tried to sell or merge with a bigger company in an effort to continue their work on Pleo but it just was not meant to be. Ugobe's IP which includes a number of patents is expected to fetch a decent amount of money when put on sale.

In general, the consumer robotics market is currently under a lot of stress because of the ongoing debt and credit crisis. The truth is that there exist no robots in the market that perform a useful task at a price that would justify a money strapped consumer to purchase it. I would not be surprised if sales of other toy and consumer robots such as those manufactured by WowWee and iRobot have also gone down in volume in the last few months and probably remain lower than usual for the rest of the year. Of course, both WowWee and iRobot are large enough companies to survive the current economic conditions but a small company such as Ugobe had little hope of doing the same.

I just hope that the Ugobe employees who find themselves unemployed in such difficult times are able to find new work quickly.