iPad App Preview: iBrite – The light-up toy from childhood is all grown up

If you’re old enough to remember, you probably have a soft spot in your heart for those old-timey Lite Brite toys from years gone past. Before there were high-powered gaming consoles, the Internet, or even smartphones, children entertained themselves with analog toys like this. Well, what was old is once again new with the Apple iPad. The new iBrite iPad app takes the modern advantages of a 10-inch capacitive touchscreen and melds it with the push-pin joy of a Lite Brite pad.

For those of you not old enough to remember, the Lite Brite was essentially a light panel overlaid with a black grid that had tiny holes punched out of it. Into those holes, you’d push in variously colored plastic pins that transmitted the light and lite up in different colors. The idea was to create words or shapes or crude images using all those pins at your disposal. But, being an analog toy, image resolution was horribly low. Today, the iBrite iPad app brings the nostalgic toy into the 21st century.

The image below shows you what the original Lite Brite looked like. The iPad version features more colors, touchscreen support (obviously) and increases image resolution a million-fold. Okay, maybe not a million-fold, but it’s a significant increase, to be sure.

You trace out areas of the “canvas” with your finger, laying down digital push pins of assorted colors as you go. In the end, you should have a somewhat recognizable image or message on the iBrite screen. It’s pretty simple. Almost as simple as the original Lite Brite toy.

We downloaded the app just for the sake of having warm feelings of childhood. Turns out, it’s a great bit of fun, too!

The video below demonstrates the app in all its glory.

– iBrite for iPad ($1.99) [iTunes link]