the buzz log

This year, the gift trend toys with your mind.

Mattel, better known as the house of Barbie, showed up at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January with a funny-looking contraption called Mindflex. The set-up entails a small purple ball, a white-and-blue plastic "obstacle course" console, and a headset.

But not just any headset: You strap it around your forehead, then try and move the ball with your brainwaves. Telekinesis for the holiday stocking? Looks like a winner.

Mind the gender gap
Online lookups on Yahoo! for "mindflex," "mattel mindflex," and "mindflex game" are, dare we say, mind-boggling. In the past 7 days, they've made the top 5,000 searches on Yahoo!. (Scarcity's part of its appeal: Vendors cut back on toy orders this holiday season.)

While blogs think the male geek market's the primary target, the Web traffic for the game's coming mostly from prepubescent boys and women aged 35-44. Sure, some women might be doing some gift browsing, but their searches are more than double than men of the same age.

The Mattel game, which went on sale in October, has a fan base in the Eastern half of the U.S. Places most itching to play brain ball: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, South Carolina and Minnesota.

What's behind mind control
The popularity taps into the ultimate couch-potato fantasy: moving things without moving a muscle. The sensors, explains the Mattel site, reads brainwaves using a "variation of EEG technology." PC World gets into more specifics: The game's based on NeuroSky technology, and taps into "beta-wave activity" (what deep thinkers give off when they concentrate), converts it into a signal, then transmits that "as a radio frequency."

Big dreams
Mind control may be a game now, but the hope is this technology could evolve to train athletes, personalize online communication with emotional feedback, wake up drivers falling asleep at the wheel, and even help people focus their way out of Alzheimer's or addictions. (For the worst-case scenarios, just go to the sci-fi and horror section of any bookstore.)

Worth the brain cells?
It might help already: One Amazon reviewer claimed MindFlex is helping her autistic son slow down and concentrate. Other reviewers, though, found that the allure of raising a ball up and down wore out pretty fast, and isn't worth the price tag (ranging from $59.99—sold out, of course—to as much as $120.)

By the way, if you do try it out and the ball refuses to move, don't panic: You still have brain activity. The game requires 4 C batteries.

Filed under: Shopping, Holidays, Science, Toys, Games

Lombard Street: It bills itself as America's crookedest road. It zigs and zags down a steep San Francisco hillside in sharp, hairpin turns. Add water to it, and it would be a super-fun water slide. Add ice and it would make a killer luge. Or, if you're a board game celebrating your 60th anniversary, then you take over the street with a giant, winding Candy Land track. Invite kids from the UCSF Children's Hospital, and you've got yourself some good, clean fun — not to mention eye candy.

Word of the supersized board game caused searches to immediately surge on "candy land lombard street."

For those of you who haven't played the Hasbro game in a while, don't worry: You'll catch on quick. The game doesn't require much reading or counting. Knowledge of colors, however, is a must. So tots, follow along: Cards are drawn, each displaying a color matching the ones on the board's track. Move your playing piece to that color on the track. First one to the end of the track wins.

The sweet little game was dreamed up by one Eleanor Abbott of San Diego, who concocted the colorful track, cards, and magical land while she recovered from polio. She imagined the game would be the perfect confection for other kids who suffered from the disease. She sent her idea off to Milton Bradley, who introduced the game in 1949. Kids have been getting a sugar buzz ever since.

Watch a video of the transformed Lombard Street.

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Filed under: Games

No one's objecting to this jet expense.

As if seeing "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience" in pulsing, in-your-face detail wasn't enough, the Disney-backed threesome is jetting coast-to-coast as part of their "Surprise Theater Invasion Tour." Since an invasion is by nature secretive, the surprise lies in which theater the JoBros will drop by in the flesh. 

The JoBros' first stop was, unsurprisingly, Hollywood, but besotted fans—and there are shrieking gaggles of them—with V CAST-enabled phones can track the invasion. If Blackberrys go missing this weekend, you know why.

The question isn't whether JoBros beats down its sole competitor and gameboy fantasy, "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li." (Don't worry, fans of the first female "Streetfighter" trailblazer: The title's pulling in decent searches, which means decent attendance, high torrent activity, and a DVD release party down the line.) THe question is whether they can beat Miley Cyrus' movie's $31.1 million opening weekend take. Yah, not fair: Cyrus booked 683 theaters, while the boys get almost double at 1,271 locales.

The flight plan has already been set, but the JoBros might want to hit joints in Connecticut, which leads California, Pennyslvania, New York, and Illinois in "3D" search madness. And Street Fighter's Chun-Li travel tour's first stop? Arizona is the number one state checking out her movie. The Copper State loves those female trailblazers.  

Filed under: Video Games, Movies, Music, Games, Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers