Dancing Cactus — A Toy That Talks Back
A plush toy in the browser that repeats what you say in a funny voice, dances, sings and stretches like bubble gum — ten characters, made for small hands.
Live experiment
Dancing Cactus — talk to it, poke it, stretch it
Say something, hear it back
Press Start in Mimic mode and the toy listens. As soon as you stop talking it plays your words back through a voice effect — chipmunk, giant, robot, cave, alien, radio, choir, underwater or a random mix — and its mouth moves with the sound. The recording is played back inside the page and is never uploaded.
Pull it, squish it
Stretchy mode needs no microphone. Grab the toy and drag: it stretches like bubble gum, squashes and bends, tells you how it feels about it, and springs back into shape.
Ten toys in one
Swipe or use the arrows to switch between a cactus, a bear, a robot, a dragon, a jelly, a balloon, a chick, a gummy, a springy and a blocky toy. Each one has its own body, face, colours, poke sounds and voice. Tap Dance for a new routine or Song for one of five little tunes it sings along to.
- Mimic mode repeats your voice through nine voice effects
- Stretchy mode: grab, stretch, squash and bend the toy
- Ten characters, each with its own look, sounds and voice
- Five songs played live with Web Audio
- A new dance routine on every tap
- Ten languages picked from the browser: English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and Hindi
- Big buttons and one-finger gestures for small children
- Runs on a phone: no app, no download, no account
One file, nothing to load
The characters are drawn in SVG and animated in code, and the music comes from Web Audio oscillators, so the whole toy is a single HTML file with nothing to fetch. On an iPhone, turn the silent switch off to hear it.