It's a crime that I haven't blogged this yet
The iTop in action
When Jon was in town a few months back, he and I went exploring in the giant Toys R' Us in Times Square, the one that extends up AND down a full 3 stories in each direction from street level and has among other things, a Giant animatronic T-Rex and a Ferris Wheel inside. I have, of course,seen all these things before but it's always fun to poke around in there and see whats new, especially because Jon and I have visions of one day becoming DIY toy designers and making our fortunes.
While we were walking through the "Center display" where they feature the "latest mass marketing push" item we were stopped by a man dressed in a cross between a wizards robe and a "king" costume, deftly spinning the iTop. Of course I was impressed, mostly because the technology behind the thing had to be both pretty advanced and pretty cheap. They were selling the little device for $10.
I picked up the top and gave it a spin, and was immediately hooked. It was counting the number of times I spun it and displaying it in real time using the single row of 8 LEDS on the top. As the top whipped around, it flashed the lights in sequence, spelling out words and numbers.
Jon and I took several turns trying to beat the best score, but eventually we ran out of time and had to go.
A few months passed and I had all but forgotten about the iTop (I hadn't bought one since I was saving for the wedding) and I found myself needing to buy presents for my Groomsmen. I don't know about you, but I have no need for an engraved money clip. What I do have is an endless appetite for fun desk gadgets and challenging games.
When it came time, I bought one of the iTops for each of the Groomsmen and included them in a bag with The Open CD (which includes lots of open source tools we used to put the wedding together, like Scribus and Open Office) and a CD with all the mp3s we played at the wedding. I was worried what they would think about they toy, if they would like it as much as I had and if it was appropriate.
It turns out that I was worrying for nothing! By the end of the rehearsal dinner, we were all sitting around, trying to beat the best score and trying all sorts of surfaces to get the best spin. I think we'd just broken 900 when we finally went to bed.
Jon and Rye spin while in their
tuxes
The day after the wedding, we finally got home to Astoria to find a message on my cell phone. I listened to the panic inducing message nervously, as many friends were driving home that day, and with the tone of the message, I was worried that someone had been in a car accident.
"Ten" the voice on the message screamed. A chill ran down my back. I was confused by the message, but the voice was hard to read. Who was it from?
"Fourteen!" The message continued, again in that slightly panicked yell. I was sweating now. I didn't know if I was listening to a prank, if something horrible had happened, or what.
"Ten-Fourteen! 1014, new record on the iTop! Just had to call and tell you. We're up at college safe. Have a good trip."
Rye hadn't been up at school more than a few hours before they'd broken out the iTop and shattered the standing single-spin high score. He had called me out of excitement! I let out a sigh of relief and laughed. What a great little gift that had turned out to be.
Little did I know that in the week were on our honeymoon, Ryan's friends at college would make our standing records look paltry, inventing new ways to spin the top and spurring us to break the contest into separate events like the "Snap" method and the "Indian fire" method.
Meanwhile, back out in California, Jon was experimenting with different materials to spin on to try to get the best spin out of his and up in Rochester, Doug was showing his (slightly wonky one) off with his work buddies. I don't know, maybe we're all geeks in the same way, but for $10, that's one hell of a toy to me.
Way to go Irwin toys. Toys R' Us seems to be having trouble keeping them in stock in their NYC store, so I don't know if they're having trouble keeping up demand or they're just flying off the shelves. Either way, its good to see such a great product selling well, especially without a major advertising push or paying for a license to brand it with some kid-friendly logo.
If you buy an iTop:
- Beware that some of the tops are slightly off balance. So far, 2 out of 7 were just a bit wobbly. For $10, it's well worth the risk, and it's still a fun toy, but you might not beat the world record with it. Also, watch the packaging to make sure the "battery seal" is sill intact in back
- Check out the "secret modes". Switch to mode 1 and then hold both the play and mode buttons for 5-10 seconds. The flashing modes will do cool things like draw patterns and display a compass.
