Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
What in the whirl?
Fidget spinners are flying off the shelves.
NEW YORK — Stores can’t keep them in stock. Parents are scrambling to find them. And some schools have banned them.
The mania for fidget spinners — the 3-inch twirling gadgets taking over classrooms and cubicles — is unlike many other toy crazes. They’re not made by a major company, timed for the holiday season, or promoted in TV commercials. They’re more easily found at gas stations or 7-Eleven than at big toy chains.
“It just took off,” says Richard Gottlieb, a consultant at Global Toy Experts in New York.
Fidget spinners have been around for years, mostly used by kids with autism or attention disorders to help them concentrate. But they exploded in popularity this spring.
Shannan Rowell, a sixthgrade special education teacher, says that after a weeklong break in late April more than half of her 25 students suddenly had one.
“They seem to be taking over classrooms,” says Rowell, who lives in North Grafton, Mass.
Helen Holden heard about fidget spinners last month when her 7-year-old twins demanded she stop at a 7-Eleven to buy them.
That store was sold out, and so were several other 7-Eleven locations that she called. The chain says spinners have “been flying off the shelves” since they went on sale in March.
At Funky Monkey Toys, owner Tom Jones says he got a phone call about the fidget spinners in April. About 30 minutes later, another person called. “I said, ‘Whatever they are, I need to get them.’”
His shop in Oxford, Mich., can sell up to 150 in a day.
On Amazon.com, 18 of the top 20 best-selling toys and games were fidget spinners.
Rowell, the sixth-grade teacher, says students twirled them too fast, banged them against desks or tried to whirl them on top of each other. She lets students bring them into the classroom, but only if they spin them under their desks. Some schools have banned them.
It’s not just kids spinning them. Gottlieb thinks adults are reaching for spinners because they are more stressed out.
Kim Juszczak, a lawyer from New York, whirls her red-and-black spinner on the subway or while she’s thinking up legal arguments for a case.
“They’re addictive,” she says.