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The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#51

Post by jliptzin »

"Well managed" meaning artificially restricting the supply to create scarcity and inflate prices?

As for disintermediation, there's still plenty of room for travel agents and the like to add value. Sure travelocity, tripadvisor etc exist, but for higher end clients who don't want/can't afford to waste time sifting through pages and pages of data/reviews from anonymous internet people, they can hire someone with experience to do all that, or perhaps someone who has built a reputation of recommending excellent itineraries all around the world. Otherwise, it's nice to have the option to do it yourself much more cheaply and efficiently. That money saved by not hiring an agent can now be put into the vacation package for better airfare, lodging, restaurants, etc.

The money and jobs don't just disappear, they go elsewhere.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#52

Post by lbotos »

Giorgi wrote: post #39

I think it started on Reddit, someone posted some gif, others asked what it was, and after several months we had craze going on our hands. I remember specifically how I checked if any Chinese manufacturers where producing it by that time - none. In fact, item in post on reddit was done on some CNC machine. then all the small-scale importers got on it. These days, it's really easy to move and market your own product s…

I mean we saw the same thing with "hoverboards" right? There was never a "branded" one, just a bunch of Chinese manufacturer brands.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#53

Post by rconti »

patorjk wrote: post #19

> ‘‘Now, in less than half a year, spinners are done,’’ Osborne says. ‘‘I’m moving on to squishies’’ — squishable toys that are also (questionably) marketed as attention aids. ‘‘I think they’ll last at least a few months.’’ As a side note, squishies have been around for a while too, at least since last year. My son is a big fan of them. I'm pretty sure he learned about them from YouTube kids, which sometimes seems li…

In the late 80s or early 90s there was a stress reliever squishy thing that was pink and had some odd shape.. I want to say like a brain or something. And of course stress balls have been trade show junk for decades.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#54

Post by rconti »

jliptzin wrote: post #51

"Well managed" meaning artificially restricting the supply to create scarcity and inflate prices? As for disintermediation, there's still plenty of room for travel agents and the like to add value. Sure travelocity, tripadvisor etc exist, but for higher end clients who don't want/can't afford to waste time sifting through pages and pages of data/reviews from anonymous internet people, they can hire someone with exper…

Yup, and as usual, a few folks were winners in the beanie baby craze, and the same goes for the travel industry. I can't see a single thing these "middlemen" create in the travel industry that's desirable for the consumer. I'm sorry, I don't need a travel agent to tell me how to find a cool, hip destination overrun with everyone else the travel industry is sending there. They probably sell fidget spinners at the arrivals area, anyway.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#55

Post by komali2 »

jasondemeuse wrote: post #38
komali2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even get how they're supposed to help with ADHD. They require too much attention to use (or I just suck at using them). I've always managed ADHD by doing things that require practically no attention - twirling a pen, doodling without looking, pacing the meeting room, etc.

Have you used one? I'm not pushing fidget spinners but I've been a pen-twirler since junior high and the spinner is almost the exact same motion with the same amount of attention involved. I don't know how you've been using them but I think you're making them far more complicated then they need to be.

The same motion? Really? I hold the middle and spin it. Usually it just hurts my nail lol. Guess I am doing it wrong.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#56

Post by jdboyd »

DanBC wrote: post #33
kobeya wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, somewhere created the first fidget spinner, named it, and marketed it. The fact that you do t know their name maybe just means they did a better job of staying out of the limelight while still profiting from the craze.

She couldn't afford the patent. I don't think she made much money from it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914

Even if she could have afforded to renew it back then, it still would have run out before they took off since the article you point to said she invented it 20 years ago.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#58

Post by barrkel »

tombusby wrote: post #45
barrkel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 100% fallacy if there's slack in the labour market. If you have 10 chaps hanging around, all of whom have broken windows, there's a gain in both wealth and employment if some of those chaps get organized and start fixing windows. To the degree that the novelty is good, keeping otherwise unemployed people active producing novelties is neither a loss nor a waste of time. Of course it doesn't make sense to go a…

> there's a gain in both wealth and employment if some of those chaps get organized and start fixing windows. This is the core of the fallacy. There'd be more net wealth without breaking the window in the first place, leaving the guy free to spend that money on someone else's goods/services, who would cause the exact same amount of growth but you'd still have a window. Spending that money that would have been spent r…

I already said that the windows were already broken. And I explicitly said people who would be otherwise unemployed. It's like you didn't read what I wrote.

And if breaking windows is a thing we value in society, then it wouldn't be a bad thing to go around breaking windows and continuously employ people to fix them up again.

The reason I'm stretching it like this is to make "broken windows fallacy" fit fidget spinners and other fads, because that's what's needed to make the analogy work. (You know, the actual topic.)

You can never stimulate a growth of wealth by destroying wealth

I never said you could. People can, however, increase their wellbeing by consuming wealth, and a cycle of consuming wealth and producing wealth is not a waste of time; if breaking windows was beneficial to wellbeing, then it wouldn't be a waste of time to continuously cycle between breaking and repairing windows.

Don't forget that wealth isn't a terminal value anyone is interested in; wellbeing (aka utility) is.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#59

Post by paganel »

theothermkn wrote: post #13

It's hard to put my finger on what exactly unsettled me about the fidget spinner craze, but it seems related to this article. All the hype seemed ad hoc. For Beanie Babies, in retrospect, it felt like a coordinated center (the manufacturer/importer and its marketing arm) surrounded by a bunch of people jumping on the bandwagon. Fidget spinners just felt like every click-baiting view-monger jumping in with their hot t…

> It's hard to put my finger on what exactly unsettled me about the fidget spinner craze, but it seems related to this article.

I'm 36, don't have a kid, and as such all the fidget spinner craze has passed me with no impact at all, i.e. I don't really care what a fidget spinner does, if it's popular or not. The same goes for the kendana/kendama thing (not sure of its exact name, too lazy to google). They're just kids' games, not sure why talking about them has become so important.

Re: The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad

#60

Post by georgebarnett »

Raphmedia wrote: post #16
amrrs wrote: post #5

It's rise in India is so fast and deep that it's been sold in local trains for 40-50 Indian rupees (~70 cents). Almost everyone from kids to adults in office and park started spinning it for no reason because they saw someone else spinning and it was just cool. PS: I bought two while in the local train. For me and my wife. A day before that a kid in my flat was showing off his skills and a week after that my 40ish ma…

> 40-50 Indian rupees (~70 cents) Ha! They sold for CAD$15 around here...

They were selling for $10 AU here and somehow 3 weeks later I got one for free because the craze was dead and somebody has excess stock.

Being patient pays off so often.

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