Wearing a giant hand? Awesome. Wearing a giant hand you can karate chop your friends with? Even better. The Thames & Kosmos Mega Cyborg Hand goes one step further by letting you wear giant mechanical hands that you can operate like an industrial robot.
That’s right, it’s a giant robot hand that you can wear on top of your tiny human hand, so you can look like a menacing cyborg that can crush people’s heads with your mechanical limb. No, you can’t actually crush people’s heads with it like similar giant hands in the movies, but with moving mechanical parts and hydraulic pistons, this thing feels like a legitimate precursor to our cyberpunk future.
The Mega Cyborg Hand is a STEM toy that seeks to give kids an introduction to hydraulics, pneumatics, and robotics by having them build and power their own mechanical gripper. That’s right, it requires building from the ground up, making it a proper hands-on lesson in a variety of engineering concepts that both kids and adults alike can find useful going forward. It comes with 203 different pieces that you will have to assemble into a functional exoskeleton, so it will take a bit of work to get right, likely requiring multiple sit-downs, especially for younger individuals. And yes, if you’re giving this to your kid, it will probably be a good idea to help them put the darn thing together to avoid those moments of frustration. For what it’s worth, Thames & Kosmos claims that kids over 10 should be able to put this together on their own.
To make putting it together easier, it comes with a full-color, 52-page instruction manual that provides step-by-step details of the entire assembly. The manual even comes with experiments that you can conduct at various parts of the build to make sure you’re putting them together correctly, saving you from having to go back and fix mistakes much later. Along with the instructions come clear scientific explanations about the concepts behind them, giving you a proper introductory lesson in hydraulic and pneumatic systems.
The Mega Cyborg Hand measures 16 inches when assembled, making it much bigger than a typical human hand, with a design that allows you to wear it over your own hand while controlling it using your fingers. It can be assembled in one of three configurations, namely a left hand, a right hand, or an ambidextrous claw with a thumb in the middle for some strange reason, complete with the option to adjust the inner section to make sure it fits in a variety of hand sizes, making it suitable for both kids and grown folks alike. The hand, by the way, uses no batteries or motors, instead relying on hydraulic pistons to make the individual fingers move, so you only need to fill the integrated tank with water to power the darn thing. Because of this, it can only grip and pick up light objects, so it’s not quite a powerful mechanical hand, despite its intimidating size. Yeah, you’re not crushing any heads with this thing.
The Thames & Kosmos Mega Cyborg Hand is available now.
- Build your own awesome, wearable mechanical hand that you operate with your own fingers.
