Air Swimmers – Another Attempt To Make Blimps Entertaining

By Andrew Liszewski

Oh lighter than air vehicles… will you ever capture the public’s heart? My guess is no. That whole Hindenburg incident a few years ago was a real PR nightmare, and since that day the most exciting applications we’ve found for blimps have been advertising tires or MetLife insurance. And in a time when kids can get a living room-friendly remote control helicopter for like $30, I think you’re going to be hard-pressed to sell them on a larger, slower, helium-filled alternative.

But surely blimps that look like marine life will get kids excited right? That’s the working theory behind these new Air Swimmers which are essentially remote-control helium-filled mylar balloons that look like a shark and a clownfish. I’ll award them a few points for originality since they actually use the back and forth motion of their tailfins to propel themselves through the air and steer, and as you can see in the video below they move at a pretty fast clip.

Buuuuuuuuut… they’re still blimps. And if a gigantic one drifting over a stadium isn’t enough to hold my attention for longer than 4 seconds, I have my doubts a smaller home version will do much better at keeping me entertained. Available sometime in July for $39.99.

[ Air Swimmers ] VIA [ DVICE ]