I had long forgotten about that annoying toy from last year until I was cleaning out the kids' rooms and found a few in a drawer. I don't recall actually buying any fidget spinners for my kids. I suspect they originated at their father's house and migrated here. I've come across the discarded spinners during other marathon cleanings but I just passed over them and left them to their own lonely solitude. This time when I came across them, I picked them out of the drawer and thought a bit about what a stupid waste of someone's money they were. The fidget spinner was short-lived, even by fad standards.
Fidget spinners hit the market in 2017. They were really only popular between May and July of that year but managed to sell well over 50 million units. The design for the fidget spinner as we know it is a modified version of the predecessor, the Torqbar.
Torqbar was designed by Scott McCoskery, a former disc jockey, and IT worker. He came up with the idea for a fidget because he would click pens or play with things in his pockets during meetings. You probably haven't heard of Torqbar. That's because each Torqbar is a high-end product and sales start at $140. A Torqbar can be made of titanium, tellurium copper, zirconium, or brass. You can have one custom designed for you and can cost as much as $800. Torqbar has sold several thousand units.
Fidget spinners for kids was a dead concept before the end of 2017. It went from a must have to forgotten in a matter of months. The fossil fuel used to make the plastic is gone, the metal used in each spinner is a lost resource, and the packaging had been discarded long ago. Energy to produce the products and the fuel used to ship and transport them all to stores is lost. So what was the point? Money. A few people became wealthy off of everyone who bought this stupid toy that brought joy to kids for a matter of months. At least a Torqbar is something that is designed to be of exceptional quality for people who have disposable income. The waste involved is similar but of a much lower quantity.
My two cents: Why are fad products so easy for people to fall for? We fall for it over and over and over again. I think the fidget spinner was the fad of fads. We can do better.
Rating: I give the fidget spinner one out of five possible slow claps for being stupid as hell and serving no real purpose.
The forgotten fidget spinners
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