Steer a toy car from your iPhone with CarBot app

If you played with Hot Wheels cars as a kid and have an iPhone today, the CarBot from Desk Pets will serve as a fun little distraction: It's basically a remote-controlled car, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Remotely controlled by an iDevice or Android phone, the CarBot can skitter across your desk or floor as you guide it around the room with a Desk Pets app on your screen and a dongle plugged into the device's audio jack. As you drive the car, you can make it go forward, backward, turn and stop. Depending on the selected mode, the robotic car also can use infrared signals to work through a homemade obstacle course or race around the room on its own, spinning in circles as it makes silly sounds.

When the car runs low on energy, it will emit snoring sounds that let you know it's time to plug its retractable USB charger into a computer or an adapter. A 40-minute charge will give you another 25 minutes of driving time.

Available in orange, red, blue and green, each colored car operates on its own frequency, allowing you and a pal to race the cars across the room. Each car costs about $30.