The Fidget Spinner. These little toy/stress reliever thingys seemed to just appear out of thin air sometime in early 2017, and now they are everywhere.
OK actually they just didn’t appear out of thin air. Similar devices have been around for more than 2 decades now. But the current incarnation really got its start into become a thing around Christmastime 2016, when Forbes published an article describing these devices as the “must have office toy for 2017.”
Within a few months, YoutTube and other social media platforms were becoming inundated with videos of users performing tricks with the spinners or reviewing their purported ability to sooth the savage beast inside.
By April of 2017, Money magazine reported that searches for “fidget spinner” were spiking on Google, and a few short weeks later, Amazon’s top 20 best seller list included them.
When they first became a thing, some enterprising vendors were charging $20 for them! Given the drastic price reduction, we think that the popularity of the fidget spinner has stabilized and is now at post-peak…but who can say for sure?
As of today, our latest poll shows that 76% of adult Americans can correctly identify a fidget spinner by looking at a photo like the one at the top of this post…while 24% don’t know what it is.
Before reading this post – did you know what a fidget spinner was?
Let us know in the comments below!