I wasn't sure if he could pull it off, but Santa apparently found a Pleo in his large sack of goodies for my 10 year-old daughter on Christmas morning (she was a very good girl - that was never in question). But is Pleo worth all the hype? Here's my hands-on review.

First of all, this thing is life-like. CRAZY life-like. But because this artificially intelligent lifeform isn't humanoid-based (wow - I sound like a huge geek saying that), it doesn't suffer from the "uncanny valley" effect (Google it!). It does, however, suffer from the "insanely cute" effect.

I set Pleo on my desk, and he saw my can of Fresca and went for it. He almost knocked it over, but I perceived that he wanted a drink, so I let him pretend to take a sip. After a few gulps, he took a step back, and burped!

He took a few steps toward the edge of my desk, and promptly fell off. I caught him (I'm not about to let a $350 toy hit the floor, even if Santa DID pay for it), and set him back safely on my desk. He uttered a faint "uh oh..." and then started walking again. This time, he got near the edge, stuck his neck down to take a closer look, and then backed off. Pretty freakin' cool.

After checking the official Pleo website, I noticed that they have a "holiday update" available. I downloaded it, threw it on an SD card, then popped it in the SD slot in Pleo's underside. A whole new Pleo was born! He sings a variety of Christmas songs, and you can tap his head and tail to use them as forward and backward buttons on an MP3 player. It's cute for a while, but gets annoying really quickly - even for a 10 year-old girl.

After restoring Pleo to his old personality (it's as simple as removing the SD card), I experimented with the mini-USB port on his underbelly. I plugged a USB cable into him, then put the other end in my laptop. Windows XP found a new device named "Pleo" - but no drivers would work, and UGOBE, the company that makes Pleo, hasn't released any drivers yet. They claim that port is only for doing firmware updates, but come on - the thing has IR sensors, a color camera, and an SD slot. You just KNOW somebody's gonna bust open a huge hack on this thing... and personally, I can't wait! Can you imagine a possessed Pleo? Or one that sings opera? Or one that just releases noisy gaseous explosions all day long? Now THAT's what 10 year-olds REALLY want!