Maku Bear

Maku Bear (妈酷熊) is a knockoff version of the 2006 release of Teddy Ruxpin by Backpack Toys.

It is an animated media player that was sold by Shanghai Xitao Tiansui Digital Technology Co., Ltd.
(上海熙韬添穗数码科技有限公司), also known as XiongSen. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that
Maku Bear's name can mean 'Mother Cool Bear'. The official website's domain name
refers to it as "momcoo", while an image file from the site refers to it as "Maku".

Appearance


Like Teddy Ruxpin, Maku resembles a bear wearing a red shirt, red pants, and a brown vest with a logo on it.
Maku is very similar to Teddy appearance-wise, but with larger round ears and no hair
on his head. The material for the mouth also appears to be different since the material for the
real toy's mouth looks smoother. Maku Bear has his logo embroidered onto his brown vest.

Features

Maku has six orange buttons on his back, a USB port, and an audio jack. While I'm not sure on
what the buttons do exactly, they can be used to control his speech. One of the buttons can be used
to pause him, but it looks like he has buttons which are used to skip or fast-forward his speech.
The plus and minus signs could be used to control the volume Maku speaks with, I'm guessing.
Maku uses rechargable batteries and can be charged using the adapter he comes with.

Software

The USB port is used to connect Maku to your computer to add or remove content from Maku. You could
use the software that comes with Maku to assist with downloading content directly from the website for
Maku (or you could download the files by visiting the website yourself), and you could import any other audio
files of your choice (WAV or MP3). The software would convert the files and then let you know when it has
successfully converted them so Maku can use them. Since the program converts audio files, I don't know if you
can still use Maku without the software.

Lost Media

Downloadable Content

All downloadable content from the official Maku Bear website (momcoo.com) is currently lost media
as they are not known to have been archived anywhere online publicly. The downloadable content from the
website included Tang poetry, songs, stories, music, and content about the English alphabet. While the
website is no longer up, it can be visited via the Wayback Machine.

Tutorials

Five video tutorials which were officially uploaded to tuduo.com appear to be lost. However,
I don't know if one of the lost videos is the demo video that's currently on YouTube. The videos were
based on the following topics:

Extra Photos




Trademark Registration

A registration for the toy's trademark was applied for on the 13th of May, 2010, and the trademark was registered by XiongSen on
the 14th of May, 2011. The patent expired on the 13th of May, 2021. The company which assisted with
the process is Shanghai Ruchuang Trademark Agency Co., Ltd. (上海律创商标代理有限公司).
An archived link for the trademark registration info can be viewed here.

Videos

Below is a demo of the toy in action and an animated promotional video for the toy.