Hack Potential: Skannerz

Skannerz is a relatively new children’s electronic toy. It is your basic “collectible” style game with which you collect skills, spells, monsters, etc… for battle with other Skannerz owners. The units can be linked for battle.

The interesting twist is that the Skannerz unit is basically a standard UPC-A symbol scanner. You are supposed to scan random consumer products, some of which will yield various items/skills and some of which yield nothing.

The unit has a built in display, obviously has some persistent memory, the ability for simple networking, a bunch of buttons, and a UPC scanner.

Sounds like some serious hack potential to me…

A Google Search will reveal a bunch of information, but nothing terribly technical yet. [bbum’s rants, code & references]

Cheap barcode scanner anyone?