Air Hogs is a line of toy airplanes, helicopters, rockets, and cars manufactured by the Spin Master company in Toronto, Canada. They are radio controlled, free-flying, and air-powered aircraft. Several of these, especially the R/C ones, are designed to be easily flown without any need for assembly.
Air Hogs was created in 1996 when Spin Master was approached by British inventors John Dixon and Peter Manning, whose prototype of a compressed air powered toy airplane had been rejected by everyone they had shown it to. Excited by the plane’s potential, Spin Master licensed the technology and spent two years and half a million dollars perfecting the toy.
The Air Hogs Sky Shark debuted first in spring 1998 and was an immediate hit, fuelled by coverage on The Today Show and Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, as well as write-ups in Time and Popular Science.
Follow-up successes have included Zero Gravity RC Wall Crawler (a radio control Hummer-style vehicle that can be driven up walls), the popular Aero Ace battery powered RC airplanes, Air Hogs Stormlauncher (a vehicle that can operate on land, water, and can fly), Havoc Heli (a 6.5” long indoor RC helicopter weighing just 10 grams) and the Reflex Helicopter (indoor/outdoor fully functional r/c helicopter). Later on, The Stinger is released. In 2008, the Havoc Heli and Stinger were released together in a Laser Battle Pack. A new toy has also been released: the SwitchBlade; a twisting blade with smaller blades that launches vertically but fly straight forward. Another popular radio- control airplane is the Hawkeye Blue Sky which was released in 2011. It is the only airplane Air Hogs has built with a built- in spy camera on (there are a few indoor helicopters that have them, but no other airplanes).
Famous quotes containing the words air and/or hogs:
“There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)