A new AI-powered toy for kids called Stickerbox has arrived. Before you groan, let me report that this is surprisingly fun.
Stickerbox, a product from Brooklyn-based startup Hapiko, is a voice-activated sticker printer. This device turns all the creative ideas in your head into printed stickers that you can color, peel, and stick anywhere.
I have to admit that before trying the device itself, I too had a negative bias due to preconceptions – so did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our initial reaction was similar. “An AI that prints stickers? I’d rather design and print them myself.”
When I tried the review machine sent to me by the company, I was completely satisfied with it.
I realized that sticker boxes had the potential to express a new form of creative play. And it doesn’t outsource a child’s imagination to an AI model as much as you might think.
AI sticker printer test
The $99.99 toy itself is a small, bright red box with a black-and-white screen and a large white “push-to-talk” button on top. Includes 3 rolls of paper equal to 180 stickers, a power cord, and colored pencils.
The box’s color scheme is reminiscent of Etch A Sketch, which makes sense considering Stickerbox is a modern take on that concept. For Etch A Sketch, you need to learn how to control the various knobs to create the image in your head. Stickerbox replaces these “knobs” with something more abstract: voice commands that you use to prompt your AI model.
Of course, kids aren’t thinking about how to become better prompt engineers. They just enjoy exploring their imagination and watching their ideas come to life. Improving the ability to prompt is a side effect.
Parents will need help setting up the device for the first time. Just like adding a smart speaker to your home Wi-Fi, you’ll first need to connect to Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi and then enter information to connect it to your home network. The setup process only took a minute and went smoothly.
Stickerbox is easy to use. You press a button to describe the image aloud, and when you release the button, the text appears on the screen, followed by the AI-generated image as the printer spits out a physical copy.
There’s something serendipitous about the experience of thinking of an idea and then picking it up within seconds.
This device’s thermal image printer requires no ink and the paper is BPS and BPA free, making it safe to use.
The printed stickers can be easily peeled off and colored with the included colored pencils. You can also use your own crayons or markers. It combines the dopamine-driven experience of thinking of new things to print with the more calming and meditative aspects of coloring, similar to giving children coloring books.
This provided a healthy balance between using addictive technology and slowing down to participate in real-world activities. It also helped me deal with potential boredom.
The more you use Stickerbox, the more you realize how complex the prompts are. In addition to requesting basic images like “magical unicorns,” you can talk to Stickerbox with long thought-training commands, and the AI will parse what you mean. (This is especially useful given that children don’t tend to explain things in simple terms.)
Creating “AI for children”
Hapiko, the company behind Stickerbox, was founded this year by CEO Arun Gupta and CTO Robert (Bob) Whitney. The two originally met while working at e-commerce marketplace Grailed. There, Mr. Whitney was the engineering director and Mr. Gupta was the CEO. (The company was sold to GOAT Group in 2022.)
Before Grailed, Gupta founded and launched WakeMate, a Y Combinator-backed hardware sleep tracker.
Meanwhile, Whitney was working as an engineering director in the games division of The New York Times, as the publisher pivoted from just a crossword offering to a full-fledged gaming app, acquiring Wordle and launching other games like Connections and Strads. That experience taught me a lot about what makes a great consumer product, and my subsequent stint at Anthropic allowed me to see first-hand advances in AI technology.
But it was his experience as a father that inspired Sticker Box.
When his son needed a coloring book he didn’t have on hand, he turned to ChatGPT to create printable images.
“I made it for him, the ice cream eating tiger, and he had never seen a printer before. I took my HP printer out from under the bed, literally dusted it off and printed it for him, and he happily ran away and started coloring,” Whitney explained. “But a minute later the gears turned and he came back to me and said, ‘I want a lizard on a skateboard.’ So I was like, okay, okay, let me build that for you.”
His son said something and got so excited about the process of making it happen that he realized there might be something to this.
“I just saw the magical look on his face. It’s like pure magic,” Whitney said.
The co-founders also thought about how AI technology could provide so many novel experiences, most of which weren’t designed for children.
“No one is building AI specifically for kids, so that’s what we’re looking for,” says Gupta. “What is the right guardrail? What is the right method? What is the right product?”
They found that children have great imaginations and are perfect for working with AI image models.
“(They) have limitless imagination and creativity… They’re learning new things every day. Every week they have a new obsession. I think we’re literally the first people in the world to put image models in a box,” said Gupta.
Built for updates
Under the hood, Stickerbox actually uses a combination of AI models, including proprietary technology focused on making devices child-safe. We do not respond to requests for harmful content, such as violence or sexual images, and exclude foul language. Also, if you try a slightly more innocuous command, such as “boobs,” it will just print a random sticker that might be vaguely related to that word. (For example, you might get a generic manga girl, but not a girl with big breasts.)
If they try it and don’t get naughty results, most kids are likely to go back to just showing crappy images on their devices instead.
“We want to be the brand that parents can trust, where they don’t have to worry about looking over their child’s shoulder and saying, ‘What are they doing? How are they using this?'” Mr. Gupta said.
For now, the company is generating some revenue from device sales, but paper refill costs have been kept low. 3 rolls equal to 180 stickers for $5.99. (Currently running a promotion offering 6 rolls with every purchase.)
Over time, the team will consider adding premium features, such as a way to upload your own images and imagine yourself with amazing scenarios and collaboration tools.
As a Wi-Fi connected device, Stickerbox is regularly updated with new firmware and features. For example, in testing we were able to print some recognizable characters, but recent updates added new guardrails to guide kids toward more original designs.
A soon-to-be-released companion app will also let you view past work and save your favorites, and could eventually serve as a home base for premium features.
Stickerbox is backed by $7 million in funding from Maveron, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, the Allen Institute’s AI2 incubator, various angels including Matt Brezina, and other consumer app product leaders.
