The Need for Speed
By David LaGesse
Posted 11/19/06
Watch Out Below. The Air Hogs Storm Launcher ($80) combines plane, car, and boat into one fast-moving bundle of plastic and foam-and foam is good, because controlling this missile is a skill that takes time to master. The radio-controlled craft skims across water or land and also takes to the air, where it can perform aerobatics.
Radar Detection. How fast would those little toy cars speed if they were full size? The Hot Wheels Radar Gun ($30) converts the speed it measures in the 1/64th-scale autos into grown-up miles per hour (the cars can reach 600 mph). The gun also measures real-life velocities of anything that moves.
This story appears in the November 27, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.