Intelligent Control Interactive Technology (I-C-IT) toys are coming to a PC near you. Tech company United Internet Technologies is introducing a range of animatronic toys which will mouth and speak instant messages delivered via net based chat-room portals. It’s all very groovy sounding – and terribly ambitious – until you realise that the kids will still need to sit there at their PC and laboriously type in their conversations as now.

According to the company blurb, the idea is that you put these specially developed toys next to the PC and they will have the ability to ‘move, speak, yell, laugh, wave their arms about, and interact with the user and other I-C-IT enabled toys all over the world’. Ermm..so a fluffy toy speaks your message out at the other end? So what?

The company has just licensed some Warner Bros characters, so the first toys are likely to be Bugs Bunny, Daffy and friends, and there are plans to produce other toys which will be able to interact with television programs as well.