More Toys For Boys

That's a pretty neat toy. You might wonder how it works. It seems to be just a small directionally controlled fan that pushes a balloon around in the air. Truth is, it "pulls" it more than it "pushes." The fan creates a column of moving air which the balloon "follows." There's something at work here akin to the Bernoulli effect: a moving column of fluid air creates a pressure differential -- a vacuum -- which the balloon "feels" and moves towards. Move the column of blowing air right or left and the balloon follows. It works like a tractor beam of air. This was good for hand eye coordination as it was easy for the balloon to lose the column of blowing air. You needed a steady hand to work this toy, especially to land it. It was also a very early application of the "joy stick" in toys and games.

You might ask why I bring this up. Well, I recently sent Chip my "Voice Of The Mummy" game from 1971 and he's absolutely delighted to have it. I don't know why I carried that toy around with me for so long. Part of it was the fact that my mother had saved all those things and then off-loaded them back onto me. Another part was my desire to regift them to my kids. But Chip was the perfect recipient because he appreciated the Egyptian aspect. Egyptologists are rare in my circles.

My Johnny Astro is even older - from 1967-8, I believe. I even had the coveted Mars and Moon landing bases. I spent countless hours playing with these things:

Then one day I broke it: I snapped the neck - the connecting piece which attaches the olive-colored fan to the red base. Or maybe somebody else broke it - I really don't recall. But I must have been upset. My dad couldn't fix it. In those days, the sort of plastic glues available now weren't around yet. So my mom asked her older brother, Bud, to have a look at it. Weeks (months?) later he paid us a visit and he surprised me with a good-as-new mend:

Uncle Bud found that .45 caliber shell perfectly sleeved the broken piece of cylindrical plastic.* He braised brazed the shell to a brass plate and fastened the plate to the back of the fan using 8 tiny brass rivets. The plastic sleeve inside the shell has a hole which mates to a post on the red base. Voila!  The brass parts are badly in need of a polish as you can see from the photo.

Uncle Bud has been dead for years, so I asked my mother about him the other day. Born in 1927, he dropped out of high school, lied about his age, and joined the Navy very late in the war. He didn't see any action, but he did get to cruise up and down the West Coast out of San Diego until his hitch was over. More importantly, he got out of Dodge. When he did return to Wisconsin, he moved to Madison and got his G.E.D. and then went to a local Tech School and trained as a machinist. He then had a long career at the Oscar Mayer plant in Madison as a machinist.

I never did properly thank him for fixing that, and it bothers me still. I can't bear to part with this part of my childhood.
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*He was a reloader as were both my grandfathers.

pistol, suction cup darts

Need a present idea for the person who has everything and who buys whatever they think of? And who also watches television sometimes?

Give this idea a chance. Amazon dart gun 2 pistols, 5 inches, it looks like ten darts each. For when Carl Rove comes on or any other unsavory fellow.

I believe these pistols have potential to boost mental health and sharpen hand eye coordination and reaction time. I want them. I will use both pistols and unload both packages of darts in series, my screen will be covered with darts. And all those people who come on to vex me are transformed to something useful and fun and good to have appear on the screen. "There you are, blam, five points as you are low value target" and so on as you watch, adding up points for yourself making television more pleasant, relaxing, charming and interactive. 

Yes, I believe grown men will love these.

Antagonists, organizers, political types want to use their mouths to push words in your ears, carriers of their malevolent ideas, so use their flappy mouths instead as targets. It will be fun. And two people can play. 

This Christmas gift can release such joy unto the world beyond your present imaginings. The people will not think of buying this delightful item themselves, being a toy it will never even occur to them, but once in their hands and shooting immediately, irresistably, at whomever for their own reasons, and seeing them stick, instead of bounce all over the place as Nerf darts do, they will wonder how they ever enjoyed life without them. You will be cheered and admired as perceptive gift buyer where cost of things means nothing at all.

But what if it fails? That happens sometimes. Gifts sometimes fail so you say, and this goes for anything, "If you don't like it I will not be offended if you have somebody in mind to re-gift it." They will smile when you say that because it lets them off the hook and makes you appear generous, and they're thinking in that moment what if they give it someone you don't like, but there is no extra generosity to it. If they give away your gift even without mentioning you, then your gift counts as two splendid gifts. 

Counts as two among who? Among the gift-generosity karma counting fairies, I don't know. All I know is this silly crap really works. You should buy them.