Dancing Cactus — A Toy That Talks 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.

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.

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.

• F.01Mimic mode repeats your voice through nine voice effects
• F.02Stretchy mode: grab, stretch, squash and bend the toy
• F.03Ten characters, each with its own look, sounds and voice
• F.04Five songs played live with Web Audio
• F.05A new dance routine on every tap
• F.06Ten languages picked from the browser: English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and Hindi
• F.07Big buttons and one-finger gestures for small children
• F.08Runs on a phone: no app, no download, no account

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.