Stikbots come in lots of colours and when we first saw them we were not too sure what to make of them. They look like small plastic robotic type figures with faces and a body that seems to pull and stretch. They require no batteries and have little suckers for hands and feet.
![Stikbots Stikbots](https://m5.paperblog.com/i/141/1414858/stikbots-L-SX04XV.jpeg)
On their own they don't really do much except stick to certain surfaces and stretch. However they are pretty clever as they work with their very own special app. The app is also called Stikbots and both me and Ryan were able to easily find it on the iPhone App Store. It's a free app too.
The idea of Stikbots and the app is to take multiple still photographs of the Stikbots using the app camera. These photographs are then cleverly combined into a fast moving video. The app doesn't come with much explanation but it's pretty simple once we got started. The app camera screen looks a little like this.
![Stikbots](http://bizzimummy.com/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/51407C72-C633-4F2A-A6E2-ED96DA5276D6/Documents/Media/img_8359-thumbnail.jpeg)
The Stikbots have suckers and can stick to multiple surfaces in and outside the home. The arms and legs are stretchy and bend into multiple positions so the idea is to continually bend them and place in slightly different position and places each time a photo is taken. In a way it's a bit like making a modern day cartoon tho with photograph rather than drawings. The more you take, the longer the video will be and as it's quite fast we found we did need to take a fair few.
It's a good idea to include props and backgrounds and make it as fun as possible.
The videos are created instantly from the app photos. Once made, music and sounds can be added and there's a few to choose from. Then the finished video is saved to device.
Here is one of the first videos Ryan made. He took about 20 photographs for this and it's give 5 seconds of video. You can slow the speed down by half but the sounds don't seem to work when we did this.
Stikbots are available to buy through Brainstorm toys who also have many more (and better) videos of the toys in action. They should be available to buy in most toy stores very soon.