There’s a Snubelgrass Hatching in Toyland

At last week’s annual American International Toy Fair in New York, the largest U.S. toy trade show, possibly the most unlikely toy maker among the more than 2,000 manufacturers, companies and solo inventors showing new product lines was a 30-something Israeli woman with a doctorate in biomedical engineering.

Lisa Dolev spent 12 years in the Israeli air force and tackled secret projects with Israel’s Defense Technology Research & Development Division before starting her toy company last February.

Her years of developing man-machine interfacing and bio-interactive technologies are what led her to hatch the plot to create a goofy-hatted, stripe-beaked, bird-like plush toy she calls Snubelgrass.

Hatched, indeed. As Dolev gave a motherly hug to a giant Snubelgrass egg--which, for demonstration and publicity purposes, stood four feet taller than the actual 7-inch model she hopes will soon nest on toy-store shelves--it began emitting a purring vibration. Soft, colorful lights danced inside its shell. With a drumroll and applause, its hatch-like top gently opened to reveal a huge Snubelgrass baby, chirping like a chickadee.

“We decided to take military technology and do something good with it,” Dolev said. “We are pioneering bio-interactive play with it.”

Dolev emphasizes that she didn’t dream up Snubelgrass (pronounced Snooble-grass) as an antiwar statement or a protest against the military.

“No, it isn’t ‘Make Snubelgrass, Not War!’ ” said Dolev, who runs Snubelgrass Interactive Inc. with three other women from the Israeli air force.

“Of course,” she said, “I would like a world that does not make war. But we decided that while defense is important and necessary to keeping peace, the technology the military was developing for defense could be applied to other things. Like the way NASA technology from space flights is applied to other things.”

The snuggly adult Snubelgrass (for ages 4 to 9), which will sell with an egg in its pouch for about $25 (eggs alone, about $16), is anything but high-tech. Equally low-tech is the children’s storybook about a faraway planet with round water and dream clouds that the Snubelgrass once called home.

But the sensors in the egg’s shell that detect human touch--the “nurturing” required to send it into its 24-hour gestation cycle--provide an early glimpse of the biotechnology to come from Snubelgrass Interactive Inc.

Dolev wants to define the company’s corporate spirit and products as technology that “senses the human touch, or the human heartbeat, or body temperature, then responds and teaches something.”

Dolev dislikes fast and furious toys that buy into the notion that children’s attention spans are short and demand loud, quick, wacky entertainment. “This is a mother’s dream come true,” she said, “a quiet toy.”