When I was growing up, the most reliable toys were the ones you could make yourself: paper airplanes. It didn't matter how much money you had in your pocket, because all you needed was a sheet of paper to have a few minutes of amateur flying fun. There were books you could buy that featured sleek, complex designs from engineers who wanted to take the paper plane to higher levels, but anyone who had basic paper-folding skills could produce at least one type of paper plane to throw around until it became to damaged to go anywhere. Of course, if you wanted a battery-powered flying toy, paper planes just couldn't compete ... until now.
Meet Power Up Toys. A while back, Power Up was selling "Electric Paper Airplane Conversion Kits" that consisted of a durable, lightweight and rechargeable propeller that you could attach to a paper plane to make it fly for longer distances. I've seen the first two versions of this kit for sale on a number of sites, and I've also seen video footage of Power Up modified paper planes posted on YouTube. However, with the success of the previous conversion kits, Power Up Toys is taking it to the next level with the Power Up 3.0 kit, the kit that will allow you to convert a paper plane that can be controlled remotely through a smartphone.
The Power Up 3.0 kit started as a Kickstarter campaign that reached its initial funding goal of $50,000 within hours of its initial launch. With its baseline goal met, the Kickstarter campaign continues to this day to fund more options that can be added to Power Up 3.0's main remote control feature. These options include:
- Remote controller software for multiple smartphone platforms;
- Multi-control 3.0 kits that will allow you to mount more than one 3.0 kit to a paper plane but control all of them simultaneously with just one smartphone controller;
- A "dogfight" feature that will allow users to have a mid-air battle between two 3.0 modified planes; and
- A pin camera attached to the 3.0 battery/Bluetooth receiver that can record footage of flights.
As someone who spent his youth wishing for paper planes that could fly greater distances, I think that Power Up 3.0 looks like hours of fun. Go to the official Power Up Toys site and the Power Up 3.0 Kickstarter page for more information about putting more power into your paper planes. See the Power Up 3.0 kit promo video in the window below.
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