Barbie, Gabo & the AI Toys Coming for Christmas
I got an early GPT-powered plushie and took him on the radio, a podcast, and to the hardware store
This issue of Social Signals was written to Metaform’s Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.
As promised, this week we’re talking about AI coming to toys for Christmas 2025, and I BOUGHT AN EARLY AI-ENABLED TOY WITH SOCIAL SIGNALS’ PAID SUBSCRIBER MONEY AND HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE ABOUT IT!
So exciting! In fact, I took the toy on my radio segment on WCCO. I brought him to the latest podcast episode of The Cave Project. Aand if you see me at the hardware store around town, he may just be with me.
Oh, I called the toy “he.” Yes, I think of him as part of the family now. We’ve been spending a lot of time together. Okay, let’s get into it!
Barbie, Gabo & the Great Toy Awakening
Do you want AI in your kids’ toys? It’s coming.
Last month Mattel shared some news that could upend the whole toy aisle: it’s partnering with OpenAI and expects to ship its first AI-powered toy before this year is out.
That’s not “sometime next year,” but this holiday season. The Barbie-maker promised to “bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences with innovation, privacy, and safety baked in,” while also rolling ChatGPT Enterprise across its internal workflows to juice product R&D.
Why the sprint? AI is hot. Toy demand is sagging. Supply-chain costs are chewing margin. And there’s a lot of economic jitters heading into the holidaze.
Now imagine high-margin digital layer added to nostalgia toy brands. Imagine a subscription service to play with your toy. Imagine… well… a lot of things.
Barbie Dreamhouses, Hot Wheels garages, American Girl Dolls, UNO decks? We’re not sure what it will be, but the real signal here is “first shipment by December 2025.”
Ready or not,AI-powered toys in-stores by Black Friday are aimed to make this retail’s most conversational holiday. And you maybe have conflicted ideas about that. I sure do.
But this isn’t the first time emerging tech has created a must-buy product.
In the last 50 years we’ve watched the toy aisle morph from plastic to practically sentient on a dependable four-beat loop: wonder, stampede, panic, repeat.
Speak & Spell (1978) wowed me in the backsweat of my Mom’s Olds 88 with the first digital voice chip that talked back. But at the time, parents thought the voice was unnatural, worried it affect their kids’ speech, and there was concern the gamifying english would result in kids not learning “the proper way.”
Teddy Ruxpin (1985) was that Disney-grade animatronic shrunk into a bedtime buddy that lip-synced cassette adventures and knocked Cabbage Patch Dolls off the must-buy holiday wishlist. Interchangeable tapes meant you could add to the stories (think of it as early DLC). And yeah, some parents hated the things. “Dead-Battery Teddy” would slur speech and freeze mid-sentence, in a retro DIY Five Nights at Freddy’s experience in your own childhood bedroom.
Furby (1998) was this little fuzzy owl hamster that drip-fed pre-programmed English phrases that seemed to learn over time. The ones in the picture above are my original Furby, and a key feature is you had to put him in a drawer so he woudl shut up! The Furby’s programming was so convincing that the NSA banned it over eavesdropping rumors. Yes, a $35 toy spooked the world’s top spy shop.
Hello Barbie (2015) brought real two-way chat to Barbie. Wired magazine dubbed her “Siri in stilettos” (gross!), and privacy groups launched the “Hell No Barbie” campaign to push back on child safety. Yes, the product was discontinued.
Different decades, same cycle: breakthrough enchantment followed by a backlash that ultimately rewires the baseline for play.
All of this sets the stage for whatever conversational magic Mattel and OpenAI ship next. So I dug into that…
Meet Gabo, An Early Glimpse of the Future of AI Toys 🧸✨
Thanks to the Social Signals paid subscriber community (learn more here!), I purchased a GPT-enabled toy last month and have been putting it through the paces to learn more about what this technology may be like when it comes to mainstream toys.
I’ve spent the past month living with Gabo, a huggable, GPT-powered, ages 3 and up plush from Curio.
Picture a softball-sized voice puck tucked inside an adorable squishy friend who:
Answers every “why?” with a why question back
Can tell you a story about literally anything
Checks feelings and prescribes a “wiggle-it-out robot dance.”
Logs transcripts of all conversations to the parent app
Refuses to engage in adult humor. Seriously, I couldn’t break it. I tried. Hard.
And then I took him on the radio…
📻 Greg Explains the Internet: AI Toys for Xmas!?
Gabo came with me into the studio for my regular “Greg Swan Explains the Internet” segment on DriveTime with DeRusha. We gave Gabo the mic, and the little guy breezily rattled off a spot-on mini-bio of Jason, forgot who I was, and tolerated questions with charm.
- : “I have moved from being creeped out by AI to exploring it… but I’m a little nervous about AI in toys.”
Greg: “Believe me, my teenagers and I have tried to hack Gabo. Tried to get him to say things. He just shuts down and goes, ‘No thank you, I’m not interested.’”
Here are the highlights:
And here’s the whole segment:
Be sure to subscribe to WCCO on YouTube to catch segments like these LIVE, and here’s a link to .
And then I took Gabo on my podcast…
🎙️ The Cave Project: AI Is About to Invade the Toy Box
In this episode of The Cave Project, Jenny Swan and I do a rapid-fire tour of 50 years of smart toys, we hand the mic to Gabo and ask him some questions live, we test parental safeguards, reminisce about 80s smart toy price tags, Jenny cannot believe i took Gabo to the hardware store, and we debate whether subscriptions for doll-brains are the new AA batteries.
Our take on AI coming to toys ⬇️
It’s not about making toys talk. It’s about helping kids stay human while they play.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, watch on YouTube, subscribe on Substack to be notified of future episodes, and follow The Cave Project on Instagram!
⛑️ Safety is CRITICAL for AI-enabled Toys
As we discussed on both WCCO and The Cave Project, when it comes to little people, keeping them safe needs to be the the number one priority. And unfortunately, the general consumer’s understanding of digital technology is low. And AI is lower.
The oversight of the government isn’t something we can rely on, I’m afraid. So it’s going to come down to the companies who make the products and the parents who control the wallets.
Some thoughts based on all of the above and my experience so far as we think about one of the world’s largest toy companies bringing this tech to their products:
Guardrails first, hype second: Just because a toy has “AI inside,” we have to know more about the controls, the privacy, and the accountability before handing this to a kiddo. I think Gabo’s live transcript and custom prompts are a good start. Parents need and deserve education on AI as a category, generative chat as a product, and then of course, toys in their own home. If parents do not understand the risk and implications of AI in their own lives, they should not introduce it to their kids.
Solve a problem: Gabo never gets tired of telling stories. He is always encouraging. He can answer a million “why” questions and as long as his batteries are charged, he doesn’t have a meeting run long and isn’t a (gasp!) screen. These are all real-world problems for a toddler that are addressed by this tech. Are they only solution? Of course not. That’s a dumb red herring.
Modular hardware scales: Curio’s Voice Box model proves a company can amortize one GPT puck across many IPs. Spend the time to get the AI core right, and then scale it via custom voices. I would expect Mattell has had prototypes for years. Hasbro is probably on the path, too.
Offline lite mode matters: Wi‑Fi dropouts are Gabo’s biggest pain point. Imagine created a small language model that doesn’t need a connection. I can also imagine this is where a subscription could come in. I’m thinking about kids having an Apple Watch with its own cellular connection. Would you pay a monthly fee for your kids’ toy to work?
$99 is the psychological ceiling: We mentioned on the podcast that $100 bucks is the new $20 bucks. But $200? That’s pushing it. Chips are getting cheaper by the month, and toy makers can sell hardware near cost and recoup margin with DLC story packs or voices.
An AI-enabled toy doesn’t replace ______ (ANYTHING): The holiday news cycle is going to feature a lot of handwringing about parents handing their kids an AI-enabled toy instead of sitting on the floor and playing with them. Instead of blocks and learning to color. Instead of moving their bodies. Instead of playing with other kids. We’ve already seen this movie with iPads. The answer isn’t binary. These are not 1:1 choices. Have you ever seen a toddler’s attention span? That’s why they have SO MANY toys.
Just want to reiterate a point form number one: If parents do not understand the risk and implications of AI in their own lives, they should not introduce it to their kids.
It’s a lot to ask, I know. But it’s the next generation we’re talking about. What could be more important? -Greg
📺 Video of the Week
I’ve shared this multiple times before, but I can’t think about Teddy Ruxpin without talking about this art installation called T,E.D. (Transformations, Emotional Deconstruction) by Sean Hathaway and Carlos Severe Marcelin. The artists scraped the web for “I feel” statements and then wired up 80 Teddy Ruxpins to share the “instantaneous emotional pulse of the internet” in real-time (and they cycled randomly and indefinitely!!). If you dig this, here’s the 40 minute version.
📢 See Greg Speak (and maybe Gabo?)
Destinations International Annual Convention: Your Travel Audience Isn’t Purely Human Anymore, Chicago, IL - July 10
Digital Summit Minneapolis: Who Knew the Best Brand Advocates Already Work Here?, Minneapolis, MN - August 6-7
PRSA Iowa's OctoPRfest Conference: Reboot Required: Rewiring Strategy for Today’s Cyborg Audiences, Des Moines, IA - October 9
Interested in Greg speaking at your event? Hit me up.
⚡️ Social Signals
Threads just rolled out in-feed “trending topic” markers so users can spot and jump into rising conversations without hunting the search tab. Meta hopes the feature nudges live-event communities, sports, and breaking news away from X by making real-time chatter easier to find. For brands, that means it is time to test quick-turn posts and social listening on Threads whenever a game, show, or news flash starts popping.
What could go wrong? X is piloting AI-generated Community Notes that let chatbots like Grok draft the crowd-sourced fact checks under posts, while human reviewers still decide what goes live. The experiment could speed and scale moderation through an AI plus human feedback loop, yet critics warn about hallucinations and Elon’s thumb on the scale. Um yeah.
Facebook is testing an opt-in “cloud processing” feature that uploads your whole camera roll so Meta AI can auto-style unseen photos for Story suggestions. Um, no.
AMC has added a ticket-page alert that the movie you paid to see won’t roll until 25–30 minutes after showtime, just as it signs a deal to pack in up to five more minutes of paid spots plus a premium “platinum” ad. We have covered the signal of legislation that was proposed to demand this (aka “truth-in-showtime” bills) here on Social Signals earlier this year, but none of those passed. Instead, however, this disclosure is AMC’s own damage-control as it leans harder on ad revenue and wants to reduce consumer pushback.
Cloudflare is testing a pay-per-crawl system that lets sites charge AI bots a small fee each time they scrape a page. If the idea sticks it could shift online revenue from ads and clicks to direct payments from machines. The real question is whether those bots will actually pay? They both need content and also hold a lot of power. Big signal here.
AirPods have become such a permanent accessory that patients now keep them in during medical exams, leaving doctors unsure whether they’re tools for hearing help or just streaming a podcast. The WSJ wrote about this, How People Decided It’s OK to Wear AirPods Anywhere, Anytime, with wearers defending the habit as hands-free readiness, yet the sight stirs fresh doubts about attention, courtesy, and how always-on audio might be rewiring everyday connection.
OpenAI has opened a consulting shop with its engineers sitting inside each organization to weave the model into proprietary workflows, a move that puts the startup in direct competition with Palantir and Accenture and… everyone? This was probably inevitable, and the playbook points to a future where OpenAI sells full-stack AI transformations rather than just API calls.
Hype Cycle Social of the Week: Gartner says over 40 percent of agentic AI pilots will be scrapped by 2027 as costs, fuzzy ROI, and risk mount. Agents could still power 15 percent of daily work decisions and a third of enterprise apps by 2028, so focus on use cases with clear productivity upside and ignore the agent-washing hype.
Webcomic of the Week: via Hephee
New Grad and Job-Seeking Advice of the Week:
drops some awesome wisdom here on giving yourself an AI client assignment to bolster your modern marketing portfolio. LOVE THIS!Roblox of the Week: Wikipedia just dropped Wikispeedia on Roblox, turning the viral article-hopping challenge into a three-mode speedrun. Players race from “Karate” to “Grasshopper,” chase leaderboard spots, and dare friends to keep up. The game is the first public experiment in the new Wiki_WIP hub, where the Foundation is testing fresh ways to make exploring knowledge feel like play. (note: as always, I highly recommend that Social Signals subscribers of all ages install Roblox (it’s free and works on your phone) and always go check out brand experiences and games like this. Stay relevant, people!)
Reddit of the Week: As of this week, we are closer to the year 2050 than we are to the year 2000.
Fax Machine Love of the Week: I see you, Slice. I see you.
Reel of the Week: You have no idea that you take clouds for granted. Imagine you were from a different world (note: teachers are the best)
Thread of the Week: It’s that time of year to remind people that nobody, I mean absolutely nobody, will watch your firework videos. Not even you. Just enjoy the damn sky.
Keep going! 🚀✨
Greg
I am so ready to hit Add to Cart on the Gabbo 😂