To test exactly how durable the Spokester really is, we had to get creative. So, instead of hiring a bunch of kids to ride around in circles for a year or two, we built a machine to run the Spokester continuously. Then, we mounted a bike on top of it, clipped on a Spokester, and turned it on.
We ran it for several days non-stop (it made a lot of noise), which is far more stress than any Spokester would come under in the real world. Safety is very important, especially considering this is a toy meant primarily for kids. When we took the Spokester off the bike, it was a little scratched up, and a little bent (which corrected itself within a few hours), but otherwise perfectly unharmed. The bike spokes it had been paddling on for all that time were a bit more shiny, but otherwise showed no ill effects.
Below is a photo of the testing rig and a short video clip of it in action. (If you don’t see the video below, give it a sec to load.)
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Spokester is made, owned, and everything else in the USA. Patent pending.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
You guys are too much!
You need to video the process you did to built this test rig in the style of Mythbusters with lab coats, goggles, and exaggerated safety precautions, put a film together then put it out on this blog and copy to YouTube and Google Video and Yahoo Video.
Another idea is to do your film in the style of CSI — super serious, stylish, low-cut blouses on attractive curvaceous women, tight shirts on buff men, MTV-style opening shots and transitions and, of course, a good selection of hip urban music.
Yet Another Idea: get a dB meter and measure the sound coming from the Spokester in different environments (sound from inside car, inside SUV, etc). Get as ridiculously elaborate as you want to be in your experiment for viral marketing fun. Exaggerate for effect e.g. Spokester noise overcomes ear-damaging 130 dB from ghetto hoopdee-mobiles.