Apparently the included battery-powered headset utilizes your brainwaves to power a fan on the base unit, which propels a ball up a tube. The more you concentrate, the more the ball moves. Crazy! I almost bought the thing then and there, but my natural skepticism kicked in and I figured I’d do some more research before dropping $70 on a silly toy (although $70 is a good deal based on the prices I’ve seen online and elsewhere for the same toy).

The product has received mixed reviews, and a lot of people seem to find it poorly constructed, prone to malfunction, or annoyingly loud (apparently the pre-programmed Yoda voice can get quite obnoxious). The most discouraging reviews I have seen, however, claim that the technology doesn’t even work as advertised. One customer on Amazon claims that the headset merely uses your skin to complete a circuit, and that he was able to power the fan and move the ball by using his hand. If I can wear the headset on my hand and achieve the same results as if I was wearing it properly on my head, then the product’s claims to operate by reading brainwaves seem dubious at best.

If this was the first incidence of this technology I had seen or heard about, I might not have even investigated the toy further, since the ability to control a toy with one’s brain seems futuristic enough that my first glimpse of this sort of thing surely wouldn’t have been the result of a casual glance down a Costco toy aisle. However, I’ve heard of this technology before – upon seeing the toy I recalled reading an article online about a similar headset/fan combo controlled by brainwaves. When I saw the Star Wars toy, then, I was merely surprised that they had applied and branded the technology so quickly. If it doesn’t work as advertised, however, then the real applications of this technology might still be a few years off, but I have yet to buy and test my own Force Trainer. At this point I’d just say “buyer beware!”