Imagno Matoi: A Unique Toy Experience at Spielwarenmesse 2017

At first glance, imagno looks like a few classic, beautiful wooden blocks. But these have it all. They can be used to build various animals using magnetic points and sensors. But that's not all. Mother or father can set a task using an app. For example, that a horse or a dog should be built. The child tries to solve this task and is rewarded with a song or a story if they succeed. Later, the game behavior can be tracked in the app. The game can therefore also be very helpful for educational or therapeutic purposes. Find out more in our video.

Wooden toys with high-tech from imagno

Jürgen Groh: Mrs. Rudat, I salute you! I can see some very original bricks here. It still looks normal, but there's a smartphone next to it. Is there a connection? Kerstin Rudat: Yes, we combine classic wooden toys with high-tech. And there are invisible magnets and sensors hidden in the wood. These sensors can be controlled via an app. Would you like me to program one? We'll choose the horse now, that's a bit more difficult. With the song. Now he's about to say: "Build a horse to hear a song." Now you can try to build one, I'm holding out the instructions from the smartphone. Jürgen Groh: Are they all magnetic now? Kerstin Rudat: Yes, there is always a point where it holds magnetically.

App for defining the game objective and for game analysis

Jürgen Groh: Okay, you have to find them. Now that it's finished, you can hear the horse neighing, which means the horse is alive. And you can now program that too? Kerstin Rudat: What's new is that I can read the sequence and the playing time on the app on my cell phone. This means that I can see how long the child has been playing and what they have built. In this respect, it is also interesting for therapeutic purposes or for older people. The horse is a bit more difficult to build, it's for older children. You could imagine making an evening ritual out of it, we build the horse together and it tells a good night story. I can download this story via the app. The Farm starter set contains 8 bricks with 2 language versions, songs, stories and sounds. I can then add other language versions in French, Russian and Chinese. Jürgen Groh: How much does the starter set cost? Kerstin Rudat: We haven't set a price yet. We are planning to launch a limited edition in the middle of the year and then really go into series production towards the end of the year.

Jürgen Groh: As a start-up, how do you go about entering the market? Kerstin Rudat: With naivety and megalomania and that we simply said, we're inventing this now. Invented by mothers, developed by nerds. We had an idea. We looked for people at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, technicians and engineers. There are various people in our team who have developed it further. We pitched in various competitions in search of an investor. We are taking one step at a time. We have been with the idea for 12 months. We founded the company 4 months ago and are going full throttle right now. Jürgen Groh: I wish you every success. Kerstin Rudat: Thank you very much!

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