WowWee

Shortly before the Hasbro sale,[4] Peter Yanofsky reportedly caught physicist/roboticist Mark Tilden on the Discovery Channel, and soon hired him as a consultant.[3] Initially Tilden worked part-time with WowWee while he continued his work with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but in 2001, Tilden joined the company full-time. One of his first products with WowWee was the B.I.O. Bug, released in 2001. Unfortunately, while sales were doing well, they weren't as strong as either WowWee or Hasbro would have liked. In part this has been attributed to the after-effects of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, while Tilden has also expressed disappointment with some of the limitations placed on the product design by Hasbro.[4] After moving to WowWee full-time in 2001, Tilden focused his attention on developing Robosapien.

While Tilden was developing Robosapien, Hasbro canceled the project several times, leading Yanofsky to negotiate out of the contract in 2003.[3] Robosapien was released in 2004, and over 1.5 million were reportedly sold in the first five months of sale.[5] Robosapien was the first commercially available biomorphic robot, and the first to integrate personality-like features. Tilden continued to develop the line with the Robosapien V2 (released in 2005), which added functionality like speech capability; RS Media™ robot (released in 2006), which included user-created functions, and Roboreptile (also in 2006).[6] The Roboquad a four-wheeled robot (released in 2007); the RS Tri-Bot, a three-wheeled robot (released in summer 2008),[7] and RS Media (2006).

In 2007, working with inventor Sean Frawley, WowWee released the FlyTech Dragonfly – a remote control flying ornithopter.[8] The Dragonfly was named as one of the inventions of the year by Time in 2007.[9] The success of the Dragonfly led to other flying toys, such as the Bladestar (a remote controlled helicopter) and the Butterfly (a wind-up ornithopter aimed at younger children).

On September 27, 2007, the publicly traded Optimal Group announced they had entered into a purchase agreement to acquire WowWee Ltd, which they completed in November of that year.[10]

At the 2008 CES, several new products (including the Rovio and Femisapien) were announced with their estimated release dates and prices.[11][12]

In 2010, the management of WowWee entered into a support agreement with Optimal Group, and took the company private again.[13] In 2014, a new product, MiP, was released. It won more than 10 Tech and Toy awards, including the Toy Industry Associations’ 2015 TOTY award for Innovative Toy of the Year.[14] MiP was also named "Innovative Toy of the Year" at the National Robotics Week.[15] At the 2015 CES, WowWee announced products including MiPosaur and REV.[16]

In 2017, the company employed about 100 people.[17] For the 2017 Christmas season, it introduced, through a series of viral promotions on social media, a product called Fingerlings. The tiny robots, in the shape of monkeys, sloths and unicorns, became one of the most popular toys of the season.[17][18] Some shoppers complained that they were sold fake Fingerlings on Amazon and Walmart's websites.[19] In 2018, WowWee followed up[20] the success with large interactive plush Fingerlings in the Fingerlings Hugs series.

in 2022 WowWee formed a partnership with the Roblox development group Gamefam to launch the Avastars line of dolls.