Xappr and appBlaster are fine weaponizers for your smartphone, provided you don’t care to share your violent tendencies with your friends. Thankfully, Hasbro is bridging the gap between new-school AR shooter and that teenage classic — laser tag. The NERF Lazer Tag system is getting an update for 2012 that lets you pair your blaster with an iPhone or iPod touch. The top of the plastic guns now sport a slot for your iDevice which, when loaded with the Lazer Tag app, provides you with an augmented HUD view. While you can play against purely virtual opponents, the real fun is in using to track your battles with fleshy foes. The app will display your gear and power level, and update your progress on a global Lazer Tag leaderboard. As you play, new attacks and gear will be unlocked for you to enhance your gaming experience. The app will even actually show your blasts’ trajectory, letting you see exactly where you shot your former friend. The 2012 edition of Lazer Tag will hit shelves on August 1st with individual blasters costing $40 and sets of two at $70.

Two years ago, a British space enthusiast named Robert Harrison sent a camera high into the skies to take some pretty awesome photos of the Earth. Today, we learned of a couple more space enthusiasts that recently sent their own balloon into near space, except these two fanatics are just 17-years-old, and their project included a Lego man.

The Toronto Star reports that Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad have been friends since middle school. A couple of summers ago, Ho saw a video online that showed some Massachusetts Institute of Technology students sending a balloon into space. The two teenaged boys began working on their project in September, and four months of Saturdays later, they were able to launch their balloon, with Lego man astronaut, into the skies.

The balloon traveled to heights roughly 24 kilometres above sea level, three times the typical cruising altitude of a commercial aircraft, before bursting. An attached parachute ensured a safe landing, and a GPS helped the boys find it once it did bump back down to earth. It was 122 kilometres from its launch point.

Sadly, this Lego man is not quite a spaceman, yet. According to UniverseToday, NASA considers people to be astronauts once they’ve traveled higher than 80 km (50 miles), so this little guy has quite a ways to go before he gets any calls from NASA. Still, he’s more of an astronaut than most of us.

The whole project cost $400 to carry off. This includes an $85 weather balloon online, three used point-and-shoots from Craigslist and Kijiji, a wide-angle video camera, a cellphone with a GPS app, a homemade parachute (which they sewed themselves using Muhammad’s mum’s sewing machine), and $160 worth of helium from a party supply store. The whole set-up was sealed inside a Styrofoam container and launched from a soccer pitch in Newmarket, Ontario.

Check the boys’ video below.

What’s next after Minecraft Lego? Well… Rejoice! Lego has sent us all the official images of all the Lego Lord of the Rings minifigs. That includes the first look of the awesome Gollum, the Ringwraiths, the Uruk-hais, Moria Orcs and the Mordor Orcs. It also has a clear shot of Frodo, Gandalf and the rest of the gang. They are so cute! These are not coming soon enough. We will have more exclusive images soon from New York’s Toy Fair where Lego is launching them.

The Finnish aren’t known for their high-energy personas, and we thought it might be because they save their adrenaline dumps for rally cars and snowmobiles. Turns out they also like to let their slot cars showcase hidden Type A personalities.

At a place called Autorataharrastajat ry, some very serious racers run slot cars at barely watchable speeds on an eight-lane track. It looks like some sort of scaled-up atomic experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and sounds like Transformers. We’re not actually sure if this is the world’s fastest slot car action, but it certainly looks like it could be. The video’s after the jump, skip to 0:55 to bypass the preparation and go straight to million-mile-per-hour action.

Prefer carats to cars? Have an appalling amount of money? Buy this! It’s a 1:8 scale Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 built by Robert Gülpen Engineering. First shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show, it’s about to make three entries into the Guinness Book of Records: the most expensive and most precious model car in the world, the most secure showcase – a bulletproof cabinet – and the most precious Lamborghini logo ever built.

So, beyond three spurious records and some fancy glass, what do you get? The body, doors and bonnet (all of which open) are made from carbon that’s got a 1/1000mm-thin thread of gold wrapped around the fibers.

The wheels (which turn) are made from a mix of gold and platinum, as is the interior. And the front seats are embellished with 1400 pieces of precious stones. The headlight LEDs are made from clear diamonds and the rear lights are built using coloured precious stones.

The, umm, lucky buyer also gets some masonry brickwork, a bit of paper, an old shard of metal and a big badge. More specifically, a piece of a wall stone from the Lamborghini building in Italy, the first design drawing of the Lamborghini Aventador car and engine, a bit of the prototype engine and a Lamborghini badge as big as the model itself made entirely of precious stones.

Now the interesting bit. The reckoning is that it’ll be sold at auction, but bidding begins at $5 million. Or 13 real Lamborghini Aventadors with real engines. The hammer drops this month and it’ll be up for grabs from four different houses in New York, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Beijing.

Mercifully, 500,000 Euros goes to charity, and if you find yourself stuck for cash after buying it, you boil it down and sell the materials, themselves worth 2 million Euros. And yes, we’re still talking about a toy car.

Let’s be honest: 100 miles per hour is fast. Especially for a remote control car. Sure, there are real cars that can easily double than number, and a few baseball pitchers who can throw that fast, but this is a toy we’re talking about. Except that it’s not.

“The XO-1 is not a toy and is intended for use by experts only,” says Traxxas, who warns that the XO-1 carries a risk of fire, injury or death! Further suggestions include operating the car only on a closed course, like a real racetrack or drag strip, where the XO-1 should be able to go 0-60 in just 2.3 seconds, on the way to its 100-mile-per-hour-plus top speed.

Controlling this lithium-polymer-battery-powered, all-wheel-drive projectile requires an iPhone or iPod Touch, so you can run the Traxxas Link telemetry app that unlocks the car’s top speed. Traxxas suggests you be of legal driving age to operate its 100-mph speedster, and helping to keep it out of underage hands is a $1099.99 price tag.

We’ve got all the details and two videos after the jump, so click through to see the XO-1 burning it up on the high banks of Texas Motor Speedway.

Like floods, wildfires and tsunamis, the Ken Block marketing machine is a force of nature. The exhibition driver has partnered up with Mattel for a special line of Hot Wheels toys that include 1:64-scale die cast versions of Block’s WRC Ford Fiesta in either black or white liveries. As with most Hot Wheels toys, the cars are priced at $1, which means that just about everyone can afford to find one of these in their stocking this year.

Mattel has also unveiled two different remote controlled Ken Block cars, starting with the radio-controlled Nitro Speedsters Ford Fiesta. The pint-sized R/C car is a self-contained controller and racer unit, perfect for stuffing in your pocket. We imagine the tiny wireless car would be ideal for disrupting class or the occasional office meeting. The whole kit will set you back $25.99.

Those of us who demand a slightly larger R/C experience may opt for the Ken Block R/C Fiesta Stunt Car. The toy allows just about anyone to execute either wide or tight drifts with little more than a press of a button, and with a scale speed of 0-80 mph in two seconds, the toy should be plenty of fun for $45.

If you’ve always wanted to pilot a battleship but aren’t willing to work your way up through the ranks, here is the solution. Currently listed on Ebay, this twenty foot long jet driven replica of the battleship New Jersey is a unique alternative to the real thing.

Somewhere in between a toy boat that belongs in the bathtub and a full-size battleship is this unique replica. Based on the real battleship “New Jersey”, this replica is 20 feet long and 56 inches wide. It is powered by a 120 horsepower Sea Doo jet drive and set up for a two man crew-which we assume to be the amount of people that can actually fit in the boat.

If the idea of a miniature battleship isn’t enough to sell itself, there’s more. Besides the fact this unique craft was well crafted and includes full working instrumentation, it has two fully articulating turrets that have high pressure water guns attached.

This one of a kind boat is currently listed on Ebay with a Buy-it-now price of $80,000. While it may seem like a lot for an oversized toy that looks like an undersized battleship, we certainly can’t think of a more unique way to hit the water.

SOURCE via eBay

When it comes to objects of automotive lust, few tip the scales further than the Lamborghini Aventador. Naturally, most mere mortals (like us) can’t come up with nearly enough expendable income to ever fulfil the dream of owning an actual, drivable toy like that.

If we can’t afford the real thing, at least we can get ourselves a smaller scale model, right? Well, maybe… unless the 1:8 scale Aventador you’ve got your eye on comes with seats, headlights and steering wheel made from diamonds, wheels fashioned from gold and platinum and a perfectly scaled copy of the body crafted from carbon fiber. Yes, this is not your typical Shell Ferrari diecast toys.

Just how much would such a fancy bauble cost? We hope you’re sitting down: at least $4.7 million. Yes, in dollars. Auction house Sotheby’s plans to sell the wee Lambo to the highest bidder in December with the lofty starting price just quoted, but if you just can’t wait to get your hands on it, you can buy it from Robert Gülpen, the modeler, for a cool $6 million.

Or, you could buy a dozen actual Aventadors for that price, which may be far more satisfying.

It’s said that Apple’s iPhone is very magical, and there’s an app for everything. It’s so magical you can almost drink water from it. But let’s just admit it, playing Angry Birds and Cut-A-Rope and some Tap Tap Revenge may be abit boring after you’ve played finish em and replayed again for 3 times. Why not bring the fun outside?

Your iPhone isn’t limited to just making calls and some simple apps. You can even control your television with your iPhone. And today, we’re gonna show you one more thing that you can control – an RC helicopter!

This ain’t your regular kiddy RC helicopter made of plastic and shitty remote. This is the i-helicopter! The full body frame structure is made entirely of metal, which greatly reinforce the structure of the helicopter, besides helping to reduce damage during any crashes. The helicopter also has coaxial structure which improves its flying capability greatly.

But the fun doesn’t just stop there. The manufacturers have utilized the new gyroscope meter in the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad to tilt the helicopter while flying, which gives you the feeling that you’re playing a very fun game. There are also very pretty LED lightings for added coolness, just like your car.

The app for i-helicopter will allow you to control 3 i-helicopters simultaneously with its 3 band radio. There are a total of 9 models (3 colors, 3 sizes). The i-helicopter can be charged with USB (either through your computer or a USB charger), and more battery power can be conserved if you turn off the onboard LED.

SPECIFICATION

• Product Size: 20 x 12 x 12cm
• Gyro: Built-in
• Control Signal: Infra Red
• Bands: A/B/C band selectable (at the iPhone App)
• Movement: Left / Right Rotation, Foward / Back, Hover and Land
• Charger time: approx. 40 mins.
• Flying time: approx. 5 mins.

Get your i-helicopter here