This is so wrong in so, so many ways. Like five ways at once.
I know the Little Tikes Young Explorer were just a cubicle, it'd be fine. Ridiculous and depressing, but fine.
This actually has a low-to-middlin', kid-tuned Windows PC built into it; it's more My First Control Panel At The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant than My First Cube. It will literally drain the creativity and will to live from your child's developing brain. Also, it's $2,600.
If you're gonna be insistent about it, give your kid three iPads, a stripped down, c.2005 laptop and Aeron chair, and a refrigerator box, and send the rest to me.
update: Damn you, Gizmodo, can't you just stick to what you're good at: stealing iPhones from bars? This is not a new product, far from it, as Jen points out in the comments. It's just making the gadgetblog rounds, giving everyone a chance to add their own indignant outrage to the pile [ahem.]
If you look even a little more closely at Little Tikes' website, you find references to previous Young Explorers which were joint products with IBM, and targeted at childcare providers, not [necessarily] consumers. They date from the era of 56k dial-up modems, 40Gb hard drives, and Windows XP. In other words, ancient computer history.
Little Tikes Young Explorer [littletikes via Gizmodo]
Presumably, sophisticated companies make what people want to buy. So, who wants this? My sis in law brags about the ,movie lines her toddler has memorized. We've replaced thinking with information and think the two are interchangable.
Does it come with board-book style TPS reports to fill out?
Huh. Here I thought this was an old product, as it's been in our local science center's kids' area for the past 3-4 years. Little Tykes is a sponsor for the play house, but now I'm thinking we've been product testing...
it could very well be an old product, especially judging by the specs on the PC.
Sometimes I feel like the more interesting story is tracking this kind of postbait across the gadget blogosphere. The original [sic] gadget post was from April 9, and it worked its way up to OhGizmo, then to Gizmodo, where now everyone will freakout over it, and Little Tikes will wonder why they suddenly get a thousand emails calling them names.