Last year Ikea re-imagined their catalog via a special visual recognition app that brought its pages and offerings within to life in the form of inspirational videos, designer stories, ‘x-ray’ vision that peeked inside furniture, and more.
Now for their 2014 Ikea catalogue, they have given people the ability to place virtual furniture directly into their homes by simply placing the printed Ikea catalogue where they want the furniture to appear. 🙂
Oreo Cookies to commemorate the first video game created by Ralph H. Baer, has used modern day technology to create an augmented reality game called “Catch the Oreo”. The game is available on Android and iOS devices.
People living in Norway and Denmark are automatically entered into a sweepstake competition by just playing and uploading their high score. There are weekly prizes and the winners are decided by drawing lots.
Competition lasts from 8th of April to 28th of July 2013 (both dates included). So start playing.
The charm of “Catch the Oreo” is that it takes a basic arcade mechanic and gives it a physical feeling. AR turns “tap on a screen” into “catch it in your space”, which makes the game feel more immediate and more shareable.
Weekly prizes and winners drawn by lots changes the psychology. You do not have to be the absolute best player to feel you have a chance. You just have to play and upload.
That is a smart way to broaden participation, especially in markets where you want scale quickly.
By making the sweepstake specific to Norway and Denmark, Oreo can concentrate buzz, prize logistics, and local relevance. It also allows them to measure adoption and participation within a defined footprint.
It is an augmented reality mobile game created by Oreo, available on Android and iOS, where players catch Oreos to achieve a high score.
For people living in Norway and Denmark, who were entered automatically by playing and uploading their high score.
There were weekly prizes and winners were decided by drawing lots, not purely by highest score.
It ran from 8 April to 28 July 2013, with both dates included.
Use AR to add delight, but keep the underlying mechanic simple and repeatable, then attach incentives that drive replays and sharing.
A Barbie vanity frame turns an iPad into a make-up mirror, then “virtual lipstick” stays aligned to a moving face in real time. That single mechanic explains why Toy Fair in New York suddenly feels like a preview of hybrid play, where the screen becomes a window and the physical object remains the star.
Most of the standout demos share the same blueprint. A physical toy, book, or playset provides the anchor. The iPad app provides the content layer. The camera feed stitches the two together so kids can touch, move, build, and explore while the digital layer reacts.
In consumer product innovation, the most scalable mixed reality experiences treat the device as a lens onto the room, not the destination.
Augmented reality (AR) toys are physical products that use a phone or tablet camera to overlay digital characters, effects, or instructions onto the real-world toy. The toy stays central. The app adds feedback, rules, and story without replacing hands-on play.
Parents get a familiar promise. Less passive viewing and more active play. Kids get something that feels like magic because it responds to the real world, not just taps on glass.
From a design perspective, the winning pattern is low-friction onboarding and immediate payoff. Put the device in the frame, scan the page, point at the ball, then something delightful happens fast.
Lets kids try out make up while avoiding all the mess. The iPad camera tracks a face in real time so the “makeover” sticks as the head moves.
Billed as a first mass-market doll house to support augmented reality, with app-triggered activities layered onto the physical rooms.
A line of children’s books that use AR to make pages “come alive” with virtual 3D objects and animations that appear to pop off the paper.
Billed as the first app ever to let you take a virtual 3D character for a walk around your house. The physical ball becomes the anchor for an on-screen creature you “walk” around the room.
Combines playset and app play in one, with the iPad physically inserted into the fortress so the device becomes part of the toy and the adventures unfold around it.
Brain waves control furry ears.
User-created robots that can be controlled by various sensors and smartphones.
Magnetic blocks that snap together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. The “logic” is in how you combine the cubes.
A magical interactive game system built on the timeless play patterns of LEGO, building blocks, and domino tiles, but with screens and sensors inside each cube.
An AR toy is a physical toy, book, or playset that becomes more interactive when viewed through a phone or tablet. The camera feed shows the real object, and the app overlays digital characters, effects, or instructions on top.
Not really. They redirect it. The screen becomes a lens onto physical play, so the child is moving, building, and exploring while the digital layer reacts.
A physical anchor plus an app-based content layer. The physical piece gives tactile play and structure. The app provides animation, rules, progression, and feedback.
Interactivity scales when the physical product is useful on its own, and the digital layer adds meaning rather than acting as a required destination. The best experiences feel like an upgrade, not a dependency.
Too much setup and too little payoff. If the experience needs long instructions, special lighting, or frequent recalibration, the magic breaks fast and replay drops.
