Parents are hunting a little red cube that turns kid ideas into real stickers in seconds. It sold out in days last Christmas. But is it actually the most popular gift or just the loudest one on TikTok?
My AI research agent pulled the receipts, and the signal is strong. Stickerbox from Brooklyn startup Hapiko is a voice-to-sticker printer for kids. Press the white button, say the idea, see a line drawing on a tiny screen, hit print, and boom - a peelable sticker to color and trade. It’s screen-light, hands-on, and priced at 99 bucks with roughly 180 stickers in the box.
How it works without the fluff: kid speaks, speech-to-text turns it into words, safety filters clean it up, an image model spits out simple line art, thermal printer rolls it out. No ink, no mess. Real parents and reviewers call it “magic,” and for once that word fits. The loop is short and addictive in a good way - make, print, share, repeat.
Why Wi-Fi matters: prompts go to the cloud for the heavy lifting and moderation. That’s how it stays fast and kid-appropriate, and how they push updates. There is no documented offline art mode. The company does not name the model vendors. Most likely it is a blend of third party services plus their own tuning, with inference happening in the cloud.
Safety is thoughtful but not perfect. It only listens while the button is pressed, no background snooping, no ads. Certification wise, it carries the kidSAFE seal, but not the stricter kidSAFE plus tier that is a formal privacy safe harbor for the US kid privacy law. They say they follow the law, but they have not published a simple data retention timeline or whether anything is used to improve models. If you care about this stuff, ask them in writing for the exact tier and how long audio or transcripts live.
Here is the catch on the hype: it sold out quickly and got glowing coverage, but it is not on Target or Amazon’s big toy lists, and there is no public sales rank. Call it a breakout DTC hit, not the national champ. Also, the paper is proprietary. Refills are cheap, but you are married to their rolls.
My take: Stickerbox is a smart, joyful gift for families who want creativity without shoving a tablet in a kid’s face - as long as you are fine with Wi-Fi dependence and branded paper. 🎁
Would you put a cloud-connected toy in your kid’s hands, or is offline-only still your line in the sand?