Pleo in the Spotlight
For a product from a small startup, Pleo commanded remarkable attention. He was cute, he was novel, and he demoed beautifully on camera — a combination that put him in front of enormous audiences during his launch year and helped cement his place in popular memory.
Morning Television and Network News
Pleo made the leap to national morning television, charming a famous host and her celebrity guest on a major network breakfast show and drawing the kind of delighted, on-air reaction that money can't buy. He also featured in network news coverage that leaned into the human angle — the surprising depth of feeling owners developed for a machine — including a memorable segment built around one especially devoted "number one fan." Appearances like these turned an expensive niche robot into a holiday-season talking point and introduced Pleo to millions who would never have found him in a toy aisle.
Praise from the Technology Press
The tech press was an early champion. Influential outlets such as Engadget gave Pleo high marks, and specialist robot publications ran cover features on his sensors and behavior. That coverage mattered: it validated Pleo as a serious piece of engineering rather than a gimmick, and it fed a steady stream of curious buyers who trusted the reviewers' verdict that this dinosaur really was different.
The Robot-Enthusiast Scene
Some of Pleo's most meaningful early moments happened not on TV but among hobbyists. He took his first widely-seen public steps at a gathering of consumer-robot fans — a community grown up around the Sony AIBO robot dog — who were perfectly equipped to appreciate a sensor-rich, programmable creature. Pleo also turned up at robot competitions and expos, where the makers-and-tinkerers crowd embraced his hackability and traded custom behaviors. We keep the original note on those first steps in the archive.
The Webisodes and the Pleo Song
Ugobe was ahead of its time in online marketing, releasing a series of short "webisodes" that let fans watch Pleo come to life. One took viewers on a tour inside the Ugobe labs, guided by Pleo's inventor; another, "Pleo on the Street," showed a small army of dinosaurs winning over an unsuspecting town. There was even a wistful original "Pleo Song" set to behind-the-scenes footage. Together these built exactly the emotional relationship Ugobe wanted — you didn't just learn about Pleo, you rooted for him — and they were shared avidly across the early social web.
The Fan-Blog Era
Alongside the official campaign, a grassroots layer of enthusiast blogs and forums sprang up to track Pleo's every development — this very site began as one of them. Fans dissected rumors, compared notes on preorders, and posted the first hands-on impressions. That homespun coverage was part of what made Pleo feel like a shared event rather than just a product launch, and much of what we know today survives because those fans wrote it all down.
The Legacy of the Coverage
All that media attention is one reason Pleo is remembered so fondly today, well out of proportion to his sales. The clips, articles, and gatherings created a shared cultural memory that still draws people to look him up years later. Search his name now and you'll still surface news segments, hands-on reviews, and fan videos from that brief, bright window — a surprisingly complete record of a robot that was only sold for a few short years. If the coverage brought you here, the What Is Pleo? page is the best place to meet the dinosaur properly.