Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Bing Bang Boing


Saw this video on Boing Boing about a 70s era toy and wondered how I could not have any memory of it. Granted I was off to college at the time but still.....seems like it's something I would have bought for a nephew or at least snuck off to the toy store to investigate.

It reminds me of the Chaos Toy that came out several years ago which is essentially a kit of various components that allows you to build Rube Goldberg type machines. I had one that I used in my 6th grade tech class. I also have one in storage that my wife asks me every year if we can donate to somebody.
I reply, "No. A thousand times NO. No one will appreciate that toy like me. Perhaps I could be buried with it? Or even better, at my eulogy, set it up to bounce gumballs into my open casket."

I am thinking more and more that most of the mechanisms in a toy like the Chaos Toy or the Bing Bang Boing can be reproduced out of simple materials. Wouldn't it be more fun to construct your own home made kinetic machine? I think so.

After doing a quick search, I found this guy that agrees with me who built a Bing Bang Boing for his kids.




[Image created by Al Gunn to represent the perfect funeral set up for a geeky technology teacher. Better than a Millenium Falcon shaped coffin!]

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad I stumbled upon this post. I was born in 1962, but I didn't notice this toy when it was introduced.

    In the 90s, I took kids on field trips to a museum in Harrisburg, PA. One of the highlights of that museum was a contraption that lifted racquetballs up a tower and dropped them onto a series of granite blocks with angled faces. With some effort, students could arrange the granite blocks so that the ball would bounce from one block to another and so on.

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