Calling all UFO fans

Quick question.

Can anyone tell me what in the world (or out of the world) this contraption is?

It measures about 16″ and is labeled “Brookstone” on the back. When you plug it in, those four black things (cushions inserted into plastic collars) rotate at different times and at different rates. Above each rotating object, there are three switches: one a four-position electronic pad, one a three-position switch, and another which is simply an on-off switch. They seem to affect the rate frequency and direction of rotation of the four rotating things.

I think it’s some sort of 1980s gadget, but I cannot figure out what.

And here’s a closeup of one of the rotating soft things.

It makes no noise that I can hear, has no input or output jacks of any kind.

I’m stumped. It strikes me as crazy that a major company like Blackstone (a Sharper Image brand) would build and sell a completely useless machine, but in light of some of the things I have seen, I guess such things might be possible.

UPDATE: Damned if I didn’t find it for sale on ebay. Isn’t everything?

The item is called a Brookstone Quad Four Wrist Watch Winder. (Price is $179; mine cost $5.00.)

Anyway, I put four watches on it and they all rotate! (Beautifully, I guess.)

What sort of nut would actually want this?


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6 responses to “Calling all UFO fans”

  1. ccf Avatar
    ccf

    Fascinating. It’s a quad watch winder.

    http://www.brookstone.com/watch-winders-quad

  2. Amiable Dorsai Avatar
    Amiable Dorsai

    Ah, Brookstone. They went from a wonderful mail order source of hard to find tools to a source of yuppie toys remarkably quickly. Don’t know why anybody would want that, but it’s just the sort of thing that turned getting their catalog from a delight to a joke.

  3. miriam Avatar

    I have never seen any item from Brookstone or Sharper Image that could be of the slightest use to anybody. Their continued existence is a miracle.

  4. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    Who? The sort of person who has more self-winding watches than they can wear at once, of course.

    It’s quite logical, if perhaps self-indulgent.

  5. Eric Scheie Avatar

    I can’t imagine there would have been much of a market for that. How many people collect watches that need winding and want to display them? I’m thinking it might have been made for Sharper Image stores simply as a display case for their watches.

  6. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    Actually, self-winding mechanical watches are the big thing in high-end watches these days. Unlike the self-licking ice cream cone, these little guys actually work–the motion of your wrist during the day actuates an inertial winding mechanism.

    Anyway, they apparently take a very long time to wind back up if you let them wind down, so if you own more than one you need one of these winding gizmos to keep them going.

    Seems crazy, but there you go.