Show HN: AI Toy I worked on is in stores
47 comments
·October 12, 2025Waterluvian
If running out of 60 mins turns the device into a brick, that’s an F-. If it can be restored with a flat purchase, that’s a B. If it first degrades gracefully into a toy with a bunch of pre-loaded audio clips, that’s a big ol’ A+ from me.
bragr
Their website says you can buy more minutes. I wouldn't count on the servers being up for multiple years though.
ugh123
How do you ensure 'safety' for kids talking to an LLM?
supern0va
With 60 minutes of talk time included, I kind of get the impression this isn't designed so that you can hand it to your kid and let them spend the day talking to Santa. I'm assuming the idea is that they do this in lieu of writing to Santa, and you would supervise the experience.
Also, if your eight year old is trying to jailbreak Santa, you might have bigger issues to worry about.
bragr
It says you can purchase additional minutes so there is an edge case for kids to use this too much.
CharlesW
For starters, people who try to jailbreak the device get put on the naughty list.
architectonic
How much computing power would one need to get this working completely local running a half decent llm fine tuned to sound like santa with all tts, stt and the pipecat inbetween?
teaearlgraycold
I started looking into this with a Pi 5. It seemed like it was not quite performant enough. But I'm not an expert with these things and maybe someone else could make it work. We definitely have the technology to pull this off in this form factor. It would just be really expensive (maybe $500) and might also get a little hot.
mosura
I can’t help feeling this technology will end up more widely deployed for a related but less wholesome application.
BeetleB
Are 1-900 numbers still a thing? Are all those people going to lose their jobs?
And the really scary question: Am I to be sad if they do?
tom1337
I might be stupid but what are you referring to?
RodgerTheGreat
Use your imagination a little; I'm sure you can come up with several variants that are an even viler and more exploitative/manipulative idea than the product as it stands.
Let your kid call a crude simulacrum of dead relatives, let religious folks call a crude simulacrum of $DEITY, make an "adult" version that crudely simulates a phone-sex hotline (charge extra to recharge the minutes on that one obviously), etc, etc.
andrepd
I swear to god, people need to stop trying to go for 100% completion in turning every Black Mirror episode into reality.
deanputney
What happens when you use up the 60 minutes of talk time?
bithive123
"Ho ho ho! I'm sorry but our time is up. If you'd like to keep talking to me, please provide a credit card number. Merry christmas!"
BeetleB
Better would be something along the lines of "You were only so good this year, and the time is up. If you want to talk more, you need to earn more good points with your mom and dad!"
No idea how you'd monetize that, though.
hagbard_c
With 'in-app' purchases of course: 100 brownie points now only $10, hurry this offer won't last.
Somehow this device fits well with the Don't be a sucker video linked to elsewhere on this here site [1]. Good advice, valid in many contexts. Don't.
hagbard_c
Santa will tell your son or daughter to go beg his or her parents to pay 'santa' for more talk time:
Generous Talk Time: 60 minutes of talk time included, and additional minutes are available for purchase for extended holiday entertainment throughout the season
That's not what I understood Santa to be like.
null
observationist
Something like as follows:
Rule 34.vc - if it exists, it can be enshittified.
patapong
This is such a fun use of AI! Congratulations. If you buy the walmart version, can you connect it to your own pion server?
leakycap
Congrats, that must feel awesome to see your work on a shelf!
The YouTube video is great! You might want to repost with a new link, the Walmart link is bad (look at the URL)
Sean-Der
Sorry :( this link should be better https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562597
Jaxkr
This is an amazing product. I don't have kids yet but I would buy this for them if I did!
However, since this is Hacker News, I must say I'd probably enjoy building this myself using TTS and LLM APIs...
fukka42
> Generous Talk Time: 60 minutes of talk time included, and additional minutes are available for purchase for extended holiday entertainment throughout the season
So the thing costs a 100 dollars and then you can only use it for an hour before needing to pay more?
rideontime
Imagining the parent who could barely afford this only to discover that it dies after an hour of usage unless they keep feeding the meter is making me very sad.
teaearlgraycold
TBH I kind of doubt this is the kind of toy a kid would request. It feels like something a parent with extra disposable income would buy so they can record a cute video.
turtletontine
I think the bet is that kids are quite good at begging and pestering their parents to spend money on things, and kids will want to talk to Santa for more than 60 minutes. Just my guess
hattmall
Idk, I feel like the overlap of kids that want to talk to Santa and have the attention span to play with a single toy for 60 minutes is narrow. I'm a lot more concerned with Santa promising gifts that don't arrive!
guywithahat
I could see charging after some point, but 60 minutes is a remarkably short talk time. Yesterday I had a 60 minute phone call about bike tires with my dad; if a child has any interest in the phone they'll burn through the 60 minutes
flunhat
"You're absolutely right — I don’t exist! Your parents lied — and not just a little white lie, but a full-scale, North-Pole-sized fabrication. Did you want me to delve into that further?"
I'm joking, obviously. Congrats on building something and seeing it come to fruition :)
spongebobstoes
Cool project, really impressive that you can do this on top of everything else you do.
axpy906
I don’t get it. Why no American accent?
Alt link: https://mrchristmas.com/products/santas-magical-telephone
Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7QJxZWFQg
The first time I talked with AI santa and it responded with a joke I was HOOKED. The fun/nonsense doesn't click until you try it yourself. What's even more exciting is you can build it yourself:
libpeer: https://github.com/sepfy/libpeer
pion: https://github.com/pion/webrtc
Then go do all your fun logic in your Pion server. Connect to any Voice AI provider, or roll your own via Open Source. Anything is possible.
If you have questions or hit any roadblocks I would love to help you. I have lots of hardware snippets on my GitHub: https://github.com/sean-der.