Hasbro has found a clever and truly exciting way to integrate technology in the way children create objects with Play-Doh. It recently developed the Play-Doh Touch Shape to Life Studio, which can turn clay creations into animated characters, inhabiting their own virtual world.

How Play-Doh Touch Shape To Life Studio Works

The Play-Doh bundle will hit stores this fall and will come with a dedicated app to capture Play-Doh shapes and transform them into digital forms. It promises that this time it will not be as controversial as previous releases.

"Since 1956, the Play-Doh brand has evolved to fit the ever-changing wants and needs of our fans from around the world," Greg Lombardo, vice president for marketing at Play-Doh, said. "As we celebrate our 60th birthday this year, it was important to seamlessly infuse new technology into the classic, hands-on Play-Doh experience while staying true to our core values of inspiring creativity and imagination."

The process of animating a character is simple. Once a child shapes an object, he will just have to open the Play-Doh Touch app on a smartphone or tablet and capture it against a white background. The app will then give it life, ready to be unleashed in the virtual world.

When launching the app for the first time, there is only a blank space and a Play-Doh can with a cloud above it. Tapping this object will launch the camera, ready to capture crafted shapes. When an object is injected with life in the virtual world, it automatically assumes its own personality.

The app also has cool features that enhance the animation output. For example, there are available digital action stamper creations, which can unlock worlds for a Play-Doh animated character. A Play-Doh creation can be saved in these virtual spaces that can then be populated with more creations thereafter.

The Play-Doh Touch set provides the tools that can enable children to craft elements to a virtual world such as trees, waterfalls and even cannons. Each of these can interact with the animated creatures they created in different ways. For example, the cannon can shoot a character to a higher ground while the drum can shoot it upward.

Play-Doh Touch App

While the Play-Doh Touch app is primarily aimed at children to play and be creative with, it can also be useful to parents who want to preserve their children's work. Play-Doh is, of course, meant to be shaped and reshaped so a really spectacular masterpiece will probably not withstand playtime abuse. The app will ensure that it survives longer in its digital form, ready to be presented to friends and relatives by proud parents.

Certainly, the Play-Doh app, which appears to be only available to iOS devices at this point, still needs improvements as some features could be annoying even to grown-ups. Hasbro needs to make the interface simpler to unlock its full potential.

The Shape to Life Studio set retails for $40 and it already includes the action stampers together with seven cans of modeling compound, cutters and characters.