The Toothbrush Bug

On a boring night such as tonight, the girls had nothing to do and so, after some much tinkering, I decided to give them something new...

No, its not this Christmas ornament...

Nor the homemade Father's day cards...

Nor another round of mangoes...

Oh, OK. Another round of mangoes, then

But once the mangoes are gone, the night was still young and so, I brought out a toy for Kaelynn. Actually, it was for the girls but Kristine was nowhere to be found.

So, while she was playing with
a MacDonalds toy, I quickly
got out the new toy

And Kaelynn was bemused at it.

Was it because of its name, the Toothbrush Bug?

Actually, its original name was the Hexbot. And it
was being sold at Toys r Us for twice the price. But
for this version, they even gave you spare batteries
and a tiny screwdriver too.

Its a very small little bug which, for the life of
me, I could not understand how it could move.

I mean, how can this thing move at all. There are
no mechanism that I could see save for the green
rubbery 'legs'.

Wonder why it was called Toothbrush and not Hexbot
in this version? Apart from Copyright reasons, the toy
really looked like a toothbrush.

And when it was first switched on, the little darn
thing scooted around very fast. So, how does it do
that? Very simple. In actual fact, this is nothing
more than just a mobile phone vibrating motor
connected to a battery.

The vibrations from the weighted spindle
of the motor was transferred to the six
rubbery legs which then allows the toy
to 'move' about very fast. Never mind if
there is an obstruction as it will sort of
deflect itself. So, for the rest of the night,
we had a lot of fun, trying to catch it, push
it and so on.

The next morning, it was Big Sister's turn but she only
gave it a few minutes before losing interest.