Tim's Gadgets and Gizmos! @grandillusions

Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

Visit Tim's Toy Shop, at grand-illusions.com
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Alas, poor Yorick... a skeleton toy with a pull string. Makes the bones jump about a bit!

A stick pointer with a telescopic arm. Unscrew the hand at the end, and you discover a ball point pen.

A chattering pull string attached to a key fob. So you can attach it to your belt, and the keys are always at hand, but also attached safely to you all the time as well.

An unusual yo-yo that you can clip on.

From Hong Kong and Tokyo, strange jelly sweets, packed into tiny balloons.

A Japanese wind up toy, with two different actions...

Finally a Japanese wooden toy, which you can take apart to give you... seven different spinning tops!

$Tim Channels His Inner Hippy! Sign up for the free Grand Illusions newsletter, at http://conta.cc/3dplns1 Tim opens a case of toys from 1993 and finds some intriguing and unusual items! First up is the Day-Dreamer Psychedelic Toy. The company describe this as being like a Kaleidoscope of the Mind. You hold it up to your face, and blow into the tube, which causes the inner disc to rotate. Your eyes should be closed, and you should be outside on a sunny day. You should point the device in the general direction of the sun, but not directly at the sun. Remember, you eyes are supposed to be closed. The spinning disc causes a stroboscopic effect on your eyelids, and this strobe or flicker effect creates what the instructions say are phosphenes, which in turn excite the visual part of the cortex, giving rise to 3D type moirés, lattices and grid like patterns. Sadly we cannot show you the effect in this video, as the images only appear in the mind! Next, magnetic levitation - Tim shows the development of a toy that started in the US as a wooden rod with attached magnets that would hover above the base. It then was developed into a toy where it was an actual pen that was floating in mid air. So it was a desk toy that you could actually use. Often the pen was decorated to give unusual effects when you spin it. Diffraction grating paper for example. A spinner on a wire rod with diffraction grating paper, and a spinner on string also with diffraction grating paper. Finally a toy with a handle and a plastic tube with little lights in it. As Tim says at the end, if you can remember the 1990s, then you werent really there! Oh no - that was the 1960s!$