Creepy Plastic Bear Comforts, Educates Kids

Bruno Oro's creepy bear-shaped Dilus is many things, not least of which is its ability to scare hospital-bound children.

Conceived as a distance learning tool, the Dilus is intended for children who are on an extended hospital stay and cannot attend school. The skin of the bear-thing is a a conducting polymer which can change color and display pretty much anything, from web pages to games to, we guess, schoolwork. Oro calls this display "holographic", but we'd say that it is more correctly a kind of 3D.

But why a bear? Well, according to Oro, the bear shape will console the poor lonely kids and become a friend. Which, aside from the problem of the pre-mentioned creepiness seems to forget that there is a reason that more computers don't come with bear-shaped monitors: They're not efficient. We admire the innovation here, based as it is on actual field research, but we can't help thinking that it would be better (and cheaper) to just give the kids a real teddy bear and a cheap laptop.