There’s a new AI-powered toy for kids stickerboxAnd, before you scream, I’m here to report that it’s surprisingly fun.
Stickerbox, a product born from a Brooklyn-based startup hapikoIs a voice-activated sticker printer. This tool takes whatever creative idea you have in your mind and turns it into a printed sticker that you can color, peel, and stick anywhere.
Before trying out the device, I have to admit that I came in with a preconceived negative bias – as did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our initial reactions were similar: “An AI that prints stickers? I would prefer my own design and printing,
After trying out the review unit sent by the company, we were smitten.
stickerboxI realized that this could represent a new form of creative play – and one that doesn’t outsource the child’s imagination to an AI model as much as you might think.
AI sticker printer test
The $99.99 toy itself is a small, bright red box with a black-and-white screen and a large, white “push-to-talk” button on top. It comes with three rolls of paper, which equates to 180 stickers, as well as a power cord and colored pencils.
The color scheme of the box is reminiscent of Etch A Sketch, which makes sense, given that the stickerbox feels like a modern spin on that concept. In the case of HA Sketch, you have to learn how to control different knobs to create the image in your mind. With Stickerbox, those “knobs” are replaced with something more abstract: voice commands that you use to prompt the AI model.
Of course, kids aren’t thinking about how to become better quick engineers; They are simply exploring their imagination and enjoying seeing their ideas come to life. Any improvement in their signaling ability is a side effect.
To initially set up the device, parents will need assistance. Like adding a smart speaker to your home Wi-Fi, you’ll first need to connect to the Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi, then enter the information to connect to your home network. The setup process, which only took a minute, went off without a hitch.
Using Stickerbox is simple. You press a button, describe an image out loud, then release the button to see your text on the screen, followed by an AI-generated image as the printer spits out a physical copy.
There is a suddenness to an experience in which you are thinking about an idea and then within seconds hold it in your hand.
The device’s thermal image printer does not require ink, and requires paper. BPS and BPA-Free, making it safe to use.
The printed sticker is easy to tear off and then color it with the colored pencils that come with the device. Your own crayons and markers work too. This combines the somewhat dopamine-driven experience of thinking of new things to print with the more calming or meditative aspects that come with coloring, similar to giving children a coloring book.
This offered a healthy balance between using potentially addictive technology and then engaging in real-world activity. This also helped prevent potential boredom.
The more you use Sitterbox, the more you realize how complex your signals can be. You don’t just have to ask for a basic image like “magical unicorn,” you can talk to Stickerbox with long, train-of-thought commands, and the AI understands what you mean. (This is especially useful because children don’t explain things in a straightforward way.)
Creating “AI for Kids”
Hapico, the company behind Stickerbox, was founded this year by CEO Arun Gupta and CTO Robert (Bob) WhitneyThe pair originally met while working at e-commerce marketplace Grailed, where Whitney was director of engineering and Gupta was CEO, (The company was sold to GOAT Group in 2022,)
Prior to Grailed, Gupta founded and launched WakeMate, a Y Combinator-backed hardware sleep tracker.
Meanwhile, Whitney had served as director of engineering in the games division of The New York Times as the publisher pivoted from offering only crosswords to becoming a full-fledged gaming app, acquiring Wordle and launching other games like Connections and Strands. While that experience taught him a lot about what makes a great consumer-facing product, his subsequent tenure at Anthropic gave him first-hand knowledge of advances in AI technology.
However, it was his experience as a father that inspired Stickerbox.
When her son asked for a coloring page she didn’t have, she turned to ChatGPT to create the printable image.
“I made it for him – a tiger eating ice cream. And he had never seen a printer before. I got out from under the bed, our HP Brother printer – literally cleaned it out and printed it for him, and he ran over with joy and started coloring it,” Whitney explained. “But, a minute later, the gears were changing, and he came back to me, and he said, ‘I want a lizard riding a skateboard.’ And I said, OK, great, let me make that for you.”
His son was so excited by the process of saying something and seeing it come to life that he realized something could happen.
“I saw this look of magic on her face – like pure magic,” Whitney said.
The co-founders were also thinking about how AI technology offers so many new experiences, but most of them aren’t made for kids.
“Nobody is building AI specifically for kids. So that’s what we’re looking for,” Gupta said. “What are the right guardrails? What are the right methods? What are the right products?”
They realized that children have great imaginations, which is ideal for working with AI image models.
“(They have) endless imagination and creativity… They’re learning new things every day. Every week, they have a new passion. I think we’re literally the first people in the world to put an image model inside a box,” Gupta said.
Made for Updates
Under the hood, StickerBox actually uses a combination of AI models, including its own proprietary technology focused on making the device safe for children. It will not respond to requests for harmful content such as violence or sexual imagery, and it filters out profanity. And if you try a somewhat more innocuous command, like “boobs”, it just prints a random sticker that may be vaguely related to the word. (For example, you might get a normal cartoon girl, but not one with a large chest.)
After trying and failing to achieve a naughty result, most kids will probably go back to prompting the device for silly images.
Gupta said, “We want to be a trusted brand for parents, where you don’t have to look over your child’s shoulder and say, ‘What are they doing? How are they using it?’
For now, the company generates some revenue from device sales, but it keeps the costs of restocking the paper low. It costs just $5.99 for three rolls, which equates to 180 stickers. (It’s currently running a promotion that now offers six rolls with every purchase.)
Over time, the team plans to explore adding premium features, including a way to upload your own images to imagine yourself in fantastic scenarios or collaboration tools.
As a Wi-Fi-connected device, the StickerBox is regularly updated with new firmware and features. For example, in tests, we were able to print some recognizable characters, but a recent update added new guardrails to guide kids toward more original designs.
A companion app launching soon also lets you view past creations and save favorites, and may eventually serve as a home for premium features.
stickerbox is Backed by $7 million financed by MaveronSerena Williams’ Serena VenturesAllen Institute’s AI2 Incubatorand various angels, including Matt Brezina, and product leaders of other consumer apps.
