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PATRIOTIC LIGHT-UP
SPINNING BALL WAND

Patriotic Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand, retail $7.99 (www.safeway.com)*
Manufactured by (Unknown) for Safeway (www.safeway.com)
Last updated 05-07-13

The Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand is a novelty product that contains ten LEDs (four red, two white, and four blue) on a motorised spinning thing inside a protective plastic globe. The LEDs come on and the motor spins when you press & release the button on the handle.

The LEDs don't just all come on steadily; they rapidly flash independent of one another to give numerous different patterns.

* Product was not found on the Safeway website, so this URL simply leads to their 'front door'.

SIZE

The unit came to me ready to use; however batteries may or may not be included with yours.
If your unit came without batteries, obtain & install them first (see directly below), and THEN you'll be ready to add some excitement to that 4th of July parade you've been wanting so badly to go to.

If your unit came with the batteries, first off remove & dispose of the small plastic tab from the base of the unit; this tab is an insulator designed to prevent the unit from being triggered and subsequently running down its batteries during storage & transport.

Press & hold down the silvery button near the top of the barrel once to turn the light show on.
Release it to neutralise the wand.

To change the batteries, turn the product upside-down so that the globe faces the floor.

On the bottom of the handle/barrel, you'll see a silvery colored battery door with a clip on one side that has a very small screw in it. Use a #0 phillips screwdriver (the smallest one with a 1.4mm shaft diameter from my set of jeweller's screwdrivers worked well here) to unscrew the screw. You do not need to remove it from the door itself. Press in on that clip if necessary; the door should now pop off. Lift it off, gently place it on the ground, place a cherry bomb over it, light the fuse, and run like H-E-Double-Bendy-Straws...O WAIT!!! YOU'LL NEED THAT!!! So just set it aside instead.

Tip the used AAA cells out of the handle and into your hand, and dispose of or recycle them as you see fit. If that last cell does not come out, use the point of a knife to push it sideways, then tip it out of the barrel and recycle or get rid of it.

Here's a photograph showing how that third cell is behind a metal contact, and may not automatically fall out.

Insert three new AAA cells into the barrel, orienting them as you see in the above photograph. Install the one showing behind that contact first, then install the other two in any order you prefer.

Finally, place the battery door back on, swing it shut, press in on it until you hear a click, & screw in that screw you removed earlier.
Aren't you glad you didn't try to blow up that battery door now?

Current usage measures ~115mA on my DMM's 400mA scale.
The "~" means "approximate" - current varied from 100mA to 120mA depending on how many LEDs were illuminated at the moment.

Because this is a novelty item and not a flashlight, the punishments I bestow upon flashlights will not be bestowed upon the Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand. So this section of the web page will be significantly more bare than this section of the web page on a page about a flashlight who's sole purpose in life is to be a flashlight.

The product appears to be at least *reasonably* durable, and to worry about handling it like an egg would be illogical...o wait!!! Now I'm starting to sound like a Vulcan.

What I meant to say is that this unit is somewhat fragile, but it should not just fall apart through casual use or handling, or very minor accidents like short falls to carpeted floors (yes, I actually did this).

The unit vibrates quite noticeably during operation (and vibrates strongly enough to "walk" across a very smooth surface), but this was somewhat expected of a very inexpensive product of non-US origin - sometimes known as the "Hoo Phlung Pu" brand.

Photograph of the unit in operation.

Patriotic Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand in use.
That music you hear is one of the three choons from the Commodore 64 computer demo, "Mag Factor Three" that I wrote and released in mid-November 1992.

The product is not sound-sensitive, so you may ignore or even mute the zax if it pisses you off.

This video is approximately 6.899342340 megabytes (7,070,081 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than thirty four minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.

Patriotic Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand raising a stink to show that it vibrates rather noticeably when in use.

The wand's power switch was taped down, the wand was placed on the concrete of a carport, and the results were caught on video.

The point of this video is the audio (sound) component, so you'll want your computer speakers or earphones plugged in and the audio unmuted if necessary.

This video is approximately 44.000863446 megabytes (44,568,044 bytes) in length; dial-up users please be aware.
It will take no less than two hundred twenty minutes to load at 48.0Kbps.

I cannot provide either one in other formats, so please do not ask.

TEST NOTES:
Test unit was purchased at a Safeway store in Federal Way WA. USA on 05-04-13.

UPDATE: 00-00-00

Unknown

Novelty-type light-up device (seasonal - has body & LED colors red, white, & blue)

3mm LED

10 (4 red, 2 white, 4 blue)

N/A

Momentary pushbutton on/off on handle

Plastic

Transparent pastic globe protects LEDs

3x AA cells

Unknown/unable to measure

Light splatter-resistance at maximum

ĄĄĄSAN PATRICIO CON UN PAŃAL EMPAPADO DE MEAR, NO!!!

3x AA cells

200mm T x 80mm Dia. (ball) 28mm Dia. (handle)

114.0g (4.02 oz.) incl. batteries

China

Unknown/not stated (presumably guaranteeed against DOA)

This is a seasonal, novelty item and will not be furnished with a "star" rating for that reason.

Light-Up Spinning Ball Wand *

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