This Year's Christmas Toy Is a $399 Robot Duck That Naps on Command

The roast

So at Nvidia's GTC Berlin conference, CEO Jensen Huang gets on stage with a flock of Microducks. These are little robot ducks from Pollen Robotics, which is part of Hugging Face, which Nvidia bought in September. The ducks stomp around making tiny R2-D2 noises. He tells them to sit. They sit. He tells them to nap. They flop over like it's Sunday afternoon. He asks for a somersault. They somersault.

The video goes viral, and by the next day preorders blow past 20,000. Twenty thousand people saw a duck nap and said, "Take my money." And honestly? Same. A duck that naps when you tell it to is the most advanced technology I've ever been jealous of. Every dad has asked for that at bedtime and gotten a counteroffer.

And they weren't perfect, which I love. A few ducks missed their cues, and one just wandered off. That's not a bug. That's the most realistic family feature they've built. Every dad has a family photo where one person is just walking out of frame.

It's $399. It's 10 inches tall. It roller-skates and picks things up with its beak. And it's supposed to ship by Christmas, which means every dad's Group Chat is about to become a stock exchange. "Anyone find the Lavender one?" "Guy at work says get Sky before it's gone." Men who haven't texted since the Super Bowl, suddenly trading duck intel.

The company says you can teach it new tricks and share them with other owners. So now I'm on the hook for the duck's education too. Every dad is already behind on fractions.