Spike
A photo of Spike in Tiger Electronic's 2000 New York Toy Fair catalog, from by Cheerios.
Spike is an unreleased robot dog from Tiger Electronics, displayed at the 2000 New York Toy Fair. The retail price planned for Spike was $69, according to a Washington Post article, but a ZDNet article mentions it had a price of $69.95. It was supposed to have been available in fall that year.
Spike's trademark was filed on November 25, 1999.
Appearance
The robot dog is mostly silver with a black visor, speaker holes where his mouth is meant to be, a short, silver pair of ears that point upwards, and a short, silver tail. Spike has a Tiger Electronics logo above one of his back legs (this could be the case for both back legs, but I don't know if the other images in the catalog were flipped when they were added to the second page here).
Functions
Spike can walk forward and backward, run, turn his head left and right, sit, and lie down. He responds to certain voice commands and can be trained, apparently, to learn tricks such as sit, come, and fetching his bone. Spike responds to having his tummy rubbed, being pet, and he can communicate with another Spike dog. Spike is able to "'sense' his environment and learns to avoid obstacles", and he comes with a toy bone you can apparently use for training and feeding him. I don't know if he can play any other games using his bone, other than fetch.
Spike can be given a new name, but it isn't clear if Spike actually responds to his new name, or if sources are simply mentioning that you can still give Spike a name despite the name of the toy itself. It's also mentioned that Spike can "turn left or right". I don't know if this means he can turn left or right when walking or if this only refers to head movement, but the images in the toy fair catalog imply that Spike can turn his head left or right.
While Spike didn't get released, a news article from 2001 reported that while Tiger Electronics was about to introduce Poo-Chi, they were interested in adding a "more sophisticated" robot dog to the lineup of products they were offering, and when they saw i-Cybie, they had found what they were looking for.
The article doesn't mention Spike, but though they had Spike displayed at the toy fair, maybe they preferred i-Cybie more which is why Spike didn't get released?
Btw, Spike's box in the background of this image is reminiscent of a Poo-Chi box, but he isn't confirmed to be a part of the Robo-Chi toy line.
Videos
You don't get to see it in action. A few can only be seen in the background.
Other Links
