Spinning Toys & Tops

One of the strangest micro-industries to pop up in the last few years is that of the spinning toy. Foreverspin (above) was the beginning of this, as far as I can tell, when it raised half a million bucks on Kickstarter to make precision spinning tops. I can’t imagine how it would be “the perfect gift”, as they claim, for any of the people I know, including children. But it’s popular, and lucrative, and there were soon ripoffs of the Foreverspin, which were bound to happen given that it’s, uh…. a mass-produced single piece of metal.

There’s also an entire copycat-on-copycat line of “EDC Spinners”. EDC stands for “Every-day carry,” suggesting that you’d bring them with you wherever you go, along with your wallet, keys, pocket-knives, and, presumably, a holster with a Mag-Lite in it, in case you get stuck in a dark room. There’s the brass bone-shape, the triangle, the “military-grade” Destroyer Axle, and dozens more. Most of them seem to imply it’s good for “killing time,” though why you’d buy one of these for thirty or fifty bucks instead of a phone full of social media, websites, and porn is anyone’s guess.