Robots have a special place in children’s hearts. Its impact on people’s childhoods is apparent in the way they love pop culture fixtures such as Optimus Prime and the Transformers, Wall-E, and the classic Terminator series.
The cause of this love for Bumblebee and other robotic characters is people’s – especially children’s – fascination with how far technology can take the human race and innovation. Fortunately, studies have shown that this passion for these tinmen has actual educational and developmental benefits.
In fact, professionals use children’s fascination with robots as a way to get them interested in the STEM field and STEM education itself. To help you with your child’s development needs, visionaries provide families with robot toys that help them teach physical, mental, social, and emotional skills.
This article is a guide for parents in need who hope to provide their kids with the best educational robot toys on the market. These robot toys can help boost brain and body development by keeping them engaged and entertained as they learn.
To cover all you need to know about choosing the best robot toy for your family, this article will walk you through the things to consider in choosing the robot toys, what ages robot toys are good for, what the benefits are, how these toys can get your kids interested with STEM learning and the best robot toys for your kids on the market.
There’s quite a bit to cover, but if you have your heart set on exploring the best robot toys for kids, then this article is for you.
How to Choose a Robot Toy?
You know your kids most, so you’ll have the best understanding of what they love and what they have a knack for. However, there’s a lot to know about toys than just what your kids love. You have to keep in mind educational and entertainment value, quality, safety, and many other things. This article will walk you through the most important factors to remember.
Quality
Some kids, to put it delicately, can play with more excitement than others. If you know how spirited play time can be with your kids, you’ll want to buy a robot toy that can withstand your kids’ excitement.
This diligence will guarantee that you’ll be able to enjoy the full value of your purchase. You will also be able to teach and entertain your kids for longer. Kids can be rough with their toys. Some even play with toys by pretending like they’re fighting each other.
Ensuring the quality of the toy can help you maintain the durability and lifespan of the products you purchase for your kids.
Safety
Safety should be the number one policy. You’ll want to make sure that your children enjoy their toys, but you’ll also want to make sure they‘re protected from any form of danger. Make sure that you buy products that your children don’t choke on. If there are any parts that may become choking hazards, make sure you watch the kids as they play closely.
You also may want to double-check if the toys have passed required national safety standards, confirming that they are safe and non-toxic.
Age-Appropriate
Some toys can be charming and easy to excite your kids. However, before you make a purchase, make sure that the toys are age-appropriate. This effort ensures that your kids can enjoy all the features that developers intended them to experience.
Toys suitable to children’s age allow you to assess whether or not there’s anything the toy can teach your kids. You wouldn’t want to purchase a toy that your children can outgrow within a few months. Buying an age-appropriate toy allows your kids to have new experiences, building their physical, mental, social, and emotional capabilities. At the same time, these toys should be engaging and entertaining as they are educational.
Aesthetics
This element is where your parent experience comes in handy. Think about what kind of robots, play mechanics, and tasks your children enjoy the most. If your kids have a knack for assembling things and exploring functionality, there are robot kits online that you can purchase for these features. Some kids even enjoy thematic robot toys like the classic transformers.
The aesthetics are one of the most important elements that keep your kids engaged and encourage them to play with these educational toys. Using your understanding of your children’s passions and interests, choose the robot toys that will appeal to them the most.
Budget
Not all toys are created equal. In fact, robot toys come in all shapes and sizes. This variety also means varying prices. To make the most of what you pay for, do your best to be strategic about investing in safety, quality, and use cases.
Make sure you consider your children’s input as well, as many of these toys have a wide range of functionality. Some robot toys even have clinical and therapeutic functionality so make sure you’re guided by what your children need.
In the end, you know your kids best. It is, however, always nice to have an idea about what factors to consider that will help you how to buy the best match for your kids.
What Ages are Robot Toys Good For?
Robots have a variety of features to offer. Primarily, however, toys offer a chance to develop fundamental and essential skills. These STEM-fueled toys focus on physical, mental, social, and emotional skills.
With these factors in mind, robot toys would be the best fit and would work wonders for children as soon as they are three years old. This is a point in their developmental years when they are old enough to manipulate fine components that require a certain level of dexterity and motor skills to manipulate parts and toys at optimal levels.
Robot toys would be wonderful educational instruments at school as they would help teachers introduce young minds to the concept of science, engineering, and technology. These toys may help teachers teach basic concepts like spelling, counting, language, and more.
What are the Benefits of Building or Using Robot Toys?
Robot toys are amazing learning tools for STEM education. Research shows that robotics or a passion for robots helps improve essential developmental skills such as creativity, problem-solving, communication, and collaborative capacities.
Other studies suggest that early introduction to the concept of robotics – around the pre-K to second grade – helps children master fundamental robotics concepts and programming basics. Above all, playing with robots improves important skills that boost physical, mental, social, and emotional development.
Will Robot Toys Get My Child Interested in STEM?
Children’s fascination with robots, robotics, and how they work starts with their early perception of what robots are. This fascination leads them to a better understanding of what robots are in reality. As they explore STEM resources like robot toys, the experience sparks their kids’ curiosity about the machinations behind the products they play with, encouraging them to venture into science, technology, engineering, and math – the pillars that advance and progress robotics.
Their love, passion, and interest in robot toys can only lead them to an exploration of broader and interesting things. The skills that STEM toys, like robots, provide will serve and help your kids throughout their education and future career. So no matter what path they choose, these STEM toys will have an impact on their lives.
The Best Robot Toys of 2022
Thanks to the progress in technology, robot toys have come far. The functionality and features have expanded to once unimaginable heights. Now that you know about the most important elements to consider, it’s time to explore and venture into the best products the market has to offer. This list is a collection of highly-acclaimed toys and award-winning products. These toys offer the finest functionality and the most educational features. As your children’s education and entertainment are the priority, the products in this list are the recommended toys for your kids.
Decorated and highly acclaimed, the ZOOB BuilderZ ZOOB Bot is an ingenious and innovative robot toy. This amazing and excellent product is an honor winner of the NAPPA Children’s Competition, an award-giving body that features the best products for families and babies.
This ALEX Toys robotic product equips your children with components that will allow them to build their own motorized robot. The many parts available can create motorized wheels and eyes that light up. These fascinating and exciting features will keep your children amazed and engaged.
The package comes with 50 ZOOB pieces, four wheels, a pull-back motor, a pair of lights for eyes, a replaceable battery, and an instructional manual to help you and your kids build their ZOOB bots. Some of the ZOOB bots you can create are Bot Frantic Fred and Bot Wedgie Warpspeed, but if your kids wish to build their own characters, they may explore the available components and breathe life into their own creations.
This amazing Ozobot product introduces you to Bit, a pocket-sized robot that helps children understand early STEM concepts. This bot is a multifunctional and powerful companion that is capable of executing commands and following orders.
Bit plants the early foundations of programming and coding by providing children with a unique feature called Color Codes. Color Codes is a special function that teaches children about coding without having to use computer screens. Through strokes of a special set of markers that come with the package, your kids can draw commands to which Bit responds.
This robot toy also comes with an advanced online function called Ozoblockly, a unique feature that allows you and your kids to learn about programming through an easy drag and drop feature. The fantastic functionality provides children with an opportunity to learn about programming early on that is easy to understand and digestible.
Highly mobile and fun, the Fisher-Price Think & Learn Teach ‘n Tag Movi is an amazing robot toy that provides three different play mechanics.
This cool bot can roll out with amazing mobility, able to turn a full 360 degrees at incredible speeds. This fun bot also provides children with incredible question-and-answer games, encouraging children to keep themselves engaged and sharpening their critical thinking capabilities.
The robot toy also features functionality that encourages physical exercise, urging children to follow certain directions to fun games like “Movi Says” and the very popular “Red Light, Green Light.”
This innovative toy is best for children from three years old to six years old as it provides them with three ways to play. Movi the bot also showcases a pair of buttons that light up and a face that features over 60 different facial expressions.
Meccano Micronoid Code Zapp Programmable Robot Building Kit
Meccano is a STEM model robot that experts designed to become a build-your-own-robot kit for kids. Creative geniuses developed this amazing play mechanic to encourage children to improve critical thinking and problem-solving. This innovative play mechanic is highly educational, challenging, and above all, entertaining.
Best for children around 10 to 15 years old, you and your kids can work together to build Zapp the robot and connect him to your computer. Once you and your kids connect Zapp to your computer, you can proceed to explore the many programmable features the product has available together.
You can use the awesome programming feature to switch Zapp into all sorts of play modes. Zapp can be your personal DJ, a fighting robot, and even a magic eight-ball toy to see into the future. The complete package includes 101 parts, a USB cable, a motorized micro module, two real tools, and an instruction sheet for a single model.
BeatBelle has a way with babies, encouraging them to get moving through smooth moves that your kids will surely enjoy. This amazing robot toy is a groovy dancer, able to charm kids into dancing with them through four fun ways to play.
The Fisher-Price Bright Beats BeatBelle DLX has 120 different songs, sounds, and phrases that it can share with the developing minds it plays with, helping them with basic skills like counting, spelling, and color recognition. This robot toy showcases a fun spinning capability and multicolored LED light around her body and back that visually stimulates babies’ developing eyes.
Capable of shaking her hips and bobbing her head to the beat of the music, the BeatBelle is an adorable and amusing robot toy beloved by parents and children globally. This toy is an enjoyable novelty for children as early as nine months old, providing a sensory experience that babies will love and adore.
Anki Cozmo – Collector’s Edition Educational Robot for Kids
With its adorable sounds and useful features, this wee bot has been making rounds on social media. You might recognize Cozmo for his appearance in movies and on social media. This adorable bot is a real-life sidekick, ready to help you with simple tasks and teach you and your kids about basic coding.
You can challenge Cozmo to games or use Explorer Mode to see what the world is like through his eyes. This robot toy showcases a remarkably beginner-friendly user interface, making Cozmo an incredible educational robot for younger kids. Cozmo would make a great companion as you and your kids learn how to code creatively.
Easy to use, Cozmo comes with an app feature that functions with a compatible iOS or Android device. Despite its adorable looks, Cozmo is highly durable and tough. With a combination of durability and user-friendly features, Cozmo provides your kids with an entertaining and educational experience.
LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 31313 Robot Kit with Remote Control for Kids
There comes a time in children’s lives when they start loving building activities. The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 31313 Robot Kit provides children with a robot that they can build and program. Through this amazing lego innovation, your kids can design and build a fully-functional robot that can walk, talk, play games, and obey commands.
The programming and building activity can be a fun engineering activity for your children who have a knack for interesting lego builds. The package includes quite a lot of components such as 601 pieces, the innovative EV3 Brick, three different servo motors, color sensors, touch sensory, and IR sensors.
This cutting-edge robot toy utilizes a free downloadable mobile application that your children can use to explore programming options. This fantastic product comes with an instruction manual that can show you and your kids how to build 17 different robotic designs. Engaging, educational, cutting-edge, and entertaining, the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 is among the finest robot toys out there.
When it comes to robots, very few franchises are more popular than Star Wars. The latest of this science fiction saga introduces the adorable BB-8, which seemingly has become considered to be the famous R2-D2’s successor.
Creative geniuses at Sphero breathe new life into the amusing BB-8 by recreating him as a miniature application-controlled robot. Sphero designed this BB-8 to provide your kids with hours of interactive activities. Developers designed the robot toy’s functionalities to be as authentic and advanced as possible.
BB-8 is capable of realistically responding to your voice commands, showing a variety of expressions as your kids interact with him. It has bluetooth and wireless features, allowing BB-8 to explore the environment around him autonomously or according to your children’s control. Star Wars fans love the product, giving the robot toy a near-perfect 4.8 stars on the Walmart online store and 4.5 on the Amazon online store.
Used in 20,000 different schools around the world and counting, the Wonder Workshop Dash Coding Robot for Kids provides children with interactive learning experiences. Dash comes out of the box ready to play, entertain, and educate.
Your kids can have fun with Dash, interacting with him for hours on end. Children can give Dash the robot voice command and explore loops, events, conditions, and sequences that will lay the foundations for strengthened critical thinking, problem-solving, and even coding skills.
What’s special about this robot toy is that it provides an open-ended learning platform that simplifies technology and makes it accessible to younger audiences, giving your kids confidence and free reign over creative ideas.
Ideal for kids over six years old, this robot toy also introduces your children to an entire community called the Wonder League, where they can communicate and collaborate with other children, improving social and emotional skills through cooperative work.
Learning Resources Botley the Coding Robot Activity Set
Experts designed this activity set with the intention of providing children with activities that would help build STEM skills early on in their development journey. Botley the robot provides a screen-free feature that lays the foundation for essential skills children need for programming. With the help of Botley the robot, kids can learn STEM skills while having fun and staying entertained.
Botley’s activities teach children how to code through active and screen-free games that sharpen critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Manufacturers deliver Botley to homes ready to play with right off the box.
Through coding, Botley will be able to detect obstacles and work his way through them. Botley can also follow looping commands, conquer obstacles, follow black lines, and reveal hidden features for your kids to discover.
The entire activity set has 77 different components, including a remote programmer, detachable robot arms, four coding cards, six double-sided tiles, 26 obstacle pieces you can use to challenge Botley, and an introductory guide that details a variety of coding challenges.
This UBTECH innovation introduces buildable and codable robots to curious children. With this activity kit, you and your kids can breathe life into Astrobot, Astron, and Rover, robot toys with all sorts of functionality that your children will love. If your kids are feeling creative, they may customize their own JIMU creation.
The cutting-edge product introduces the innovative Blockly coding system to you and your children, a user-friendly way to learn how to code and program your robot to work and navigate obstacles, pick up objects, add habits or personalities to the robot toys, manipulate lighting and sound effects, and more.
Thanks to the futuristic Blockly coding system, you and your children may explore new features and challenges. Explore and even create new actions through the PRP (pose, record, and play) Function to elevate learning and entertainment at the same time.
Enjoy ten different projects in one box with the Tinkering Labs Robotics Engineering Kit. Professionals designed this kit to get children curious and interested in the fundamental concepts of STEM – particularly engineering.
The same visionaries who founded San Francisco’s Brightworks School devised this STEM kit to inspire millions of teachers and parents to help young minds explore their natural creative capacities. This amazing innovation has over 60 components, including 50 high-quality parts and ten challenges that will take kids on a creative adventure that will push them to become creators themselves.
The challenges and components are a combination of common and unusual resources, an ideal mix for generating creativity, improving cognitive capabilities, and instilling STEM knowledge. This incredible novelty is the best fit for children from eight to twelve years old as each of the challenges is considerably tricky. The tasks often take about 30-60 minutes, and creative kids can provide their own solutions to the problems.
This action-packed robot toy package provides children with a multifunctional LEGO invention. Kids can build, code, and have fun with remote-controlled robot toys that can shoot missiles out, play with balls, drive around, and execute many other functionalities.
With an unbelievable number of pieces available to you and your kids to explore, this activity set has over 1000 components to explore. The intelligent hub, four medium motors, color sensor, distance sensor, and breakout interface also comes with the package for kids to use as they build and invent their own amazing robotic toys.
There are a number of characters your kids can explore before they create their own robot buddies, such as Blast, who stands at 14 inches tall, and Gelo, who is 9 inches tall. The package comes with an easy-to-install rechargeable battery, so you don’t need to go through the hassle of finding spare batteries.
LEGO Star Wars Boost Droid Commander 75253 Building Set
Another Star Wars-inspired masterpiece, this LEGO innovation introduces kids to the sassy yet lovable droid R2-D2. Your children will enjoy building and eventually coding features into the LEGO Star Wars characters.
This LEGO package promotes your children to Droid Commander, giving them control of three different models, a Gonk Droid, a Mouse Droid, and R2-D2 himself. Each of these droids has personalities and skills of its own. Through a free LEGO BOOST Star Wars downloadable mobile application, the young droid commander can build robot toys to send on missions through bluetooth-enabled Move Hub and command them through an intuitive drag-and-drop coding system.
Your kids can explore features and functions as they learn how to code and build their robots. The young Droid Commanders can build tools, weapons, targets, obstacles, and many more as they work through 40 different missions that they’ll love.
This toy is not only fun but also supportive of an eco-friendly cause. As part of the Eco-Engineering and Green Science series, this toy not only instills your children with love and introduction to STEM it also helps the environment.
This innovative toy guides and encourages children to create their DIY edge-detecting robot. All you need is an empty soda can, and you and your kid can start building your very own robot. This bot can zoom around, gliding across surfaces without ever going over edges.
Build the bot using an empty can, a small crosshead screwdriver, and a AAA battery. All you need will be in the 4M Toysmith robot kit. The package includes a base cover, base with wires, a lower can ring, upper can ring, gear top plate, battery cover, two lower arms, two upper arms, two transparent covers, motor with wires, two axles, two eye supports, two eyes, two sets of bolts and nuts, two gear wheels, two terminal caps, five small screws, and a detailed set of instructions to guide you through the creation process.
You and your children can use these materials to create your robot, exploring how all the components interact and contribute to the design you wish to build.
Action-packed and multifunctional, this futuristic robot toy offers a wide range of features that your kids would absolutely enjoy!
This robot toy provides children with audio and action functions such as message playing capabilities, sound recording features, and many more. With a remote control feature, the robot can dance and shoot soft foam disks through his chest.
The toy speaks five different languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. With its user-friendly 2.4 GHz remote controller, your kids can engage their friends in a robot war from afar, maneuvering their robofriends against other bots.
The company delivers the Roboshooter ready to go right off the box. All the components that the robot needs will come from the Think Gizmos box. This includes the robot, the remote, and six AAA batteries.
Flexible and highly versatile, this amazing LEGO activity kit can be customized in three different ways. With an impressive play mechanic, your kids can use the Robo Explorer’s components to transform it into a robot, a robot dog with a jetpack, and a robot bird.
The robot’s composition is highly dynamic, able to flexibly move tracks, pivot its body and head, and pose with its arms. This novelty also has a working claw and searchlight with which your kids can equip the robots. The character showcases a soothing color scheme and bright eyes.
Overall, the LEGO Creator Robo Explorer has a total of 205 components to explore. Robo Explorer is four inches tall, the Robot Dog stands at two inches tall, and the Robot Bird is three inches tall. Dynamic and entertaining, this robot toy is an amazing toy for developing children’s motor skills as they build and their creativity and imagination as they play.
With girls as their primary target audience, the SmartGurls Coding Robot for Girls is a fantastic product hoping to encourage more ladies to get into STEM fields. This toy’s main mission is to inspire young ladies to pursue their curiosities and ultimately, a career in STEM.
The SmartGurlz is a new and highly modern line of fashion dolls that educates, entertains, and engages children around five years old using Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. This multi-award-winning masterpiece provides children with multiple levels of play. The innovative robot toy is capable of navigating missions through simple and beginner-friendly coding, following a path your kids drew, telling stories through ebooks, traveling through a direction pad or preset commands, and creating and recording routines.
The special Sugar Coded applications connect to Siggy through a smartphone or tablet and allow children to design and code actions such as dances, obstacle courses, fashion shows, and talent shows.
Control this hot rod with a free downloadable application. There’s no stopping this amazing vehicle as it can barrel through any obstacle in its path. If it hits a wall, the LEGO Technic App-Controlled Transformation Vehicle can flip over and move forward as if nothing happened.
Unstoppable, this flip vehicle is the first of its kind, being the earliest flip vehicle in LEGO Technic history. The toy is a racer with tracks designed for exploration. Your kids can enjoy hours of playtime, exploring surfaces with its wheels and app-controlled mechanisms. Kids control the vehicle, steer it, navigate obstacles, and display status through the application. The toy’s futuristic properties, coupled with the amazing LEGO construction, make for an amazing masterpiece to play with, providing several hours of fun for children.
Kids love cars, and this LEGO jeep is big enough and hulking enough to charm young enthusiasts. The LEGO Technic Jeep Wrangler is a high-performance 4×4 roadster that your kids can enjoy putting together and playing with afterward.
With realistic functions and dynamic capabilities, the toy can provide hours and hours of fun, presenting remote control functionality and many more. The jeep has a button that allows children to operate that front steering and a potent axle articulation suspension. Children can use this feature for obstacle navigation.
The toy’s realistic features include a hood and doors that open, fold-down rear seats, and a spare tire. Much like the real Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, the toy sports the eye-catching yellow and black color kids love so much.
This amazing Fisher-Price masterpiece plants the foundation of coding and STEM learning for your kids early on. The interactive Fisher-Price Code ‘n Learn Kinderbot is a robot friend that can guide your children learn about coding.
The Kinderbot provides your kids with three different ways to play and learn. These games are free coding, learning challenges, and explorations of secret codes. The toy also comes with four simple machine accessories and a booklet that will help kids learn the secret code. This fantastic toy engages and entertains children as they learn through lights, actions, and fun phrases about shapes, colors, and many others.
One of the most complex LEGO Technic models, the Cat D11 Bulldozer is an app-controlled model that you can build with your kids. Aside from the sophisticated build experience, children can also enjoy the many features of the toy.
With extremely realistic features, kids can enjoy driving and controlling the toy using an application, allowing them to explore its functionalities. The bulldozer, through this application, can move, raise, lower, and tilt the blade upon the kids’ command. Kids can also raise and lower the ripper and ladder the same way.
Makeblock mBot Smart STEM Educational Coding Robotic Kit Toy
For your kids, who have grown passionate about robotics, Makeblock mBot Smart STEM Educational Coding Robotic Kit Toy presents a system you can use to teach children coding and programming that is easy to understand.
Instilling STEM knowledge through engaging and entertaining activities, the Makeblock mBot is an amazing educational resource. To help educators and parents build lessons and drill through this innovative product, the robotic kit comes with interactive software and rich tutorials. These resources come in the form of coding cards and an online community that offers references you can use playing with mBot.
By teaching children critical thinking and problem solving, the Fisher-Price Think & Learn Code-A-Pillar helps improve necessary skills to build an understanding of coding and programming.
An amazing STEM toy, this robot toy comes with a motorized head and eight multifunctional segments that present a variety of features. These segments (move forward, turn Right 90 degrees, turn Left 90 degrees, and produce sounds. The package also comes with a pair of destination targets that make activities even more interesting.
This state-of-the-art innovation offers excellent customizability, offering versatile programmable features. The robot toy also comes with a diverse set of sensory features that designers prepared for customization. With onboard sensors, the robot toy has improved color sensors, light sensors, IR, accelerometer, and gyroscope that work together to guarantee precision in programming.
Hi, my name is Elena Jones, and my full-time job is a teacher. Through teaching, I have discovered that children learn in many different ways, and have seen the positive impact both STEM and Montessori toys have on children.
Through this site I hope to educate parents and adults about these toys, providing them with useful information on how they can be used, and provide some in depth reviews of different toys to consider too.
