
The Rise of the Fidget Spinner and the Fall of the Well-Managed Fad - shalmanese
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/magazine/the-rise-of-the-fidget-spinner-and-the-fall-of-the-well-managed-fad.html
======
ars
If you read between the lines this is the broken window fallacy: We need
people to make useless junk in order to have jobs.

But now there is no one making sure the useless junk stays popular, so less
jobs.

Except that's exactly the broken window fallacy: We could instead spend that
money on other things.

~~~
milesvp
Not exactly. Economics is all about trading. Trading is all about wants,
desires, and needs. If I make something that everyone wants, it is not useless
junk, useless junk is something nobody wants. So it's actually very important
to have feedback from middlemen who's livelihood is actually tied to
successfully making available desirable things.

There's an economic study I remember seeing in the last couple of decades that
studied the value of middlemen. The study started with the assumption that
middlemen were parasitic entities, especially since so much economic value
seems to come from "cutting out the middle man". But the study authors were
most surprised about was that the countries they studied that had the most
middlemen, also had the greatest number of economic health indicators. That is
they found middlemen to be highly correlated with the economic output of an
economy. Their conclusion was that it was probably more than correlated, but
largely causative and that middle men probably provided a lot more value than
they're generally given credit for.

This article seems to be providing some anecdotal data that supports the value
of middle men. At the very least they are good at synthesizing back pressure
data for factories so they don't end up overproducing, and have to fill
landfills with stuff no one wants.

~~~
NoodleIncident
Making something that everyone wants is a separate thing than making everyone
want something. You can do both and make a lot of money, but if the former is
fixing the windows the latter broke people still aren't better off.

For the "middle man" study, I don't know how they came to that conclusion. But
the more obvious assumption seems to be that economic output can support more
middlemen, so I'm curious what data they used to argue that it works the other
way around.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I think your vision may be colored a bit because here on HN everyone seems to
think that manufacturers can just sell direct to consumers easily by tossing
up a Shopify page and letting nature take its course.

The true value of a middle man is connecting buyers and sellers who would
otherwise have no idea the other existed, or otherwise facilitating the
transaction.

Here's an example that I'm currently involved with. I was approached by
someone to create a device that's needed on the market, but doesn't exist. I'm
quite capable of building the thing and familiar with the domain, but never
knew the thing was needed. Similarly, the company approaching me doesn't have
the internal skills to build the device, but they can sell it. The market for
this particular device isn't very large (it's only businesses who have
machinery that was built using a particular older technology and need to have
repairs done), and there are alternatives, so that explains why no one is
building these.

In this case, the company that approached me -- the middle man -- has
excellent knowledge of the market and its needs and how to best serve them. I,
the producer, had no idea this product was needed, and even knowing that now,
have no access to this segment of the market, and it's simply not large enough
to make it worth my time to begin a marketing effort in that direction.
Similarly, the end customers have never heard of me, and have no concept that
such a device could even be built.

So there you are, a middleman has just added value by offering to buy
something that I otherwise would not know to build, and by selling it (along
with other products and services), to a very underserved market that otherwise
would be forced to purchase newer equipment they otherwise don't need.

------
theothermkn
It's hard to put my finger on what exactly unsettled me about the fidget
spinner craze, but it seems related to this article. All the hype seemed ad
hoc. For Beanie Babies, in retrospect, it felt like a coordinated center (the
manufacturer/importer and its marketing arm) surrounded by a bunch of people
jumping on the bandwagon. Fidget spinners just felt like every click-baiting
view-monger jumping in with their hot take. There seemed to be, from the
outside, no central brand or centralized messaging. The closest thing to the
latter seemed to be the urban legend that these things were good for ADHD,
somehow.

Even Baudrillard's hyper-reality seemed to be orchestrated from a center; his
assertion that the Europe experience at Disney World was "more real" than
Europe itself at least required Disney to have built it.

Spinners just arose out of the background radiation, with no apparent proximal
cause.

~~~
kobeya
Someone, somewhere created the first fidget spinner, named it, and marketed
it. The fact that you do t know their name maybe just means they did a better
job of staying out of the limelight while still profiting from the craze.

~~~
DanBC
She couldn't afford the patent. I don't think she made much money from it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14271914)

~~~
paulgb
Her patent doesn't really look like what we think of as a fidget spinner
though. It's more like a spinning top.

------
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
> As Osborne learned when she started selling Beanie Babies, middlemen like
> Joyce are often the ones who turn a fad into a sustainable business that
> creates jobs.

So the NYT is saying that beanie babies were a sustainable business that
creates the ever elusive "jobs". It was sustainable in that it lasted longer,
but beanie babies are not still a sustainable business. If the metric of
success is ~7 years of business then Maddoff was running a sustainable
business.

------
jliptzin
"Well managed" meaning artificially restricting the supply to create scarcity
and inflate prices?

As for disintermediation, there's still plenty of room for travel agents and
the like to add value. Sure travelocity, tripadvisor etc exist, but for higher
end clients who don't want/can't afford to waste time sifting through pages
and pages of data/reviews from anonymous internet people, they can hire
someone with experience to do all that, or perhaps someone who has built a
reputation of recommending excellent itineraries all around the world.
Otherwise, it's nice to have the option to do it yourself much more cheaply
and efficiently. That money saved by not hiring an agent can now be put into
the vacation package for better airfare, lodging, restaurants, etc.

The money and jobs don't just disappear, they go elsewhere.

~~~
rconti
Yup, and as usual, a few folks were winners in the beanie baby craze, and the
same goes for the travel industry. I can't see a single thing these
"middlemen" create in the travel industry that's desirable for the consumer.
I'm sorry, I don't need a travel agent to tell me how to find a cool, hip
destination overrun with everyone else the travel industry is sending there.
They probably sell fidget spinners at the arrivals area, anyway.

------
amrrs
It's rise in India is so fast and deep that it's been sold in local trains for
40-50 Indian rupees (~70 cents). Almost everyone from kids to adults in office
and park started spinning it for no reason because they saw someone else
spinning and it was just cool.

PS: I bought two while in the local train. For me and my wife. A day before
that a kid in my flat was showing off his skills and a week after that my
40ish manager was spinning it while walking around. And now I hardly see
someone spinning.

~~~
Raphmedia
> 40-50 Indian rupees (~70 cents)

Ha! They sold for CAD$15 around here...

~~~
georgebarnett
They were selling for $10 AU here and somehow 3 weeks later I got one for free
because the craze was dead and somebody has excess stock.

Being patient pays off so often.

------
jonny_eh
Not all fads are the same. Some are genuinely interesting product lines that
just happen to start as a fad, but stick around (Beanie Babies, video games,
and Magic: The Gathering). Others are just fads with no legs (Fidget Spinners,
Slap Bracelets, and Cabbage Patch Dolls).

~~~
downrightmike
They had to ban slap bracelets because the cheap knock offs weren't sanded
down and ended up being sharp pieces of tape measures tape.

~~~
jonny_eh
The first prototype was built using measuring tape:
[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/you-have-to-invent-
something...](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/you-have-to-invent-something-
season-5-episode-1/)

------
vosper
I'm confused... she sold tens of thousands of dollars of fidget spinners,
getting on that craze immediately that she heard about it (she had product
within 5 days) and knowing that it was a fad that was destined to die out
(hardly the first... I remember Tamagotchi's pretty well, and the apparently
New Zealand-only Chatter Ring).

I don't think the comparison to TripAdvisor and travel agents is particularly
strong, and I think you'd be hard pushed to make the case that thousands of
travel agents who'd maybe heard something about the place you wanted to go is
better than thousands of reviews and photos from people who've actually been
there. TipAdvisor has lots of problems, to be sure, but it's still better than
travel agents.

Unrelated to the above, I'm actually excited for the craze to die out. I think
I might be one of the people fidget spinners were originally made for. I don't
have any problems focusing, but I habitually spin things in my fingers - my
iPhone, my wallet (I've worn marks into the leather), pens... It's usually
completely unconscious. So I'll be looking forward to trying a fidget spinner
once the fad has gone away.

~~~
yesiamyourdad
> I don't think the comparison to TripAdvisor and travel agents is
> particularly strong, and I think you'd be hard pushed to make the case that
> thousands of travel agents who'd maybe heard something about the place you
> wanted to go is better than thousands of reviews and photos from people
> who've actually been there. TipAdvisor has lots of problems, to be sure, but
> it's still better than travel agents.

Do you remember what it was like using a travel agent? That's not what travel
agents did. They didn't "maybe hear about a place", they actually went there.
Resorts & cruises spent a ton of their marketing dollars to bring travel
agents to the resort and get them to experience it first hand.

~~~
vosper
But most of them hadn't spend 3 months traveling in South East Asia, for
example. They knew about the resorts and travel companies that could afford to
bring them over and show them a good time. For everything else you had to
trust Lonely Planet or something, which was a guaranteed meal-ticket for
anyone who could get their business mentioned in there, without the benefit of
feedback from the people who've visited recently.

------
noir_lord
My stepson went through the fidget spinner phase in about a month, I think he
has a dozen of the damn things I keep finding them.

The longest he's stayed interested in anything is a cheap kite I bought him,
so I think next year remote control plane.

~~~
ljf
(off topic sorry) but how about a better kite? A Revolution 4 line is an
amazing kite, and stupidly fun to play with and brilliant to watch. And can be
launched alone. Highly recommend them, example video -
[https://youtu.be/sPSyuvCJF4M](https://youtu.be/sPSyuvCJF4M)

So much can (and will) go wrong with an rc plane - another alternative would
be a quad?

~~~
noir_lord
The reason I thought RC Plane is because of the cool factor and you can get
the polystyrene starter kits that can survive a hefty crash plus it's a change
to teach him about electronics and we can attack a camera to it.

He also wants to build a robot so I'm thinking something tracked with camera's
and sensors.

~~~
ljf
Nice - planes are great if you have the space - just remember how much time I
spent repairing them ;)

Love my quads now - even a hubsan x4 is a great starter - can fly inside and
outside - though not big enough to carry weight - anyway, sure you'll get him
something cool - lucky kid ;)

------
patorjk
> ‘‘Now, in less than half a year, spinners are done,’’ Osborne says. ‘‘I’m
> moving on to squishies’’ — squishable toys that are also (questionably)
> marketed as attention aids. ‘‘I think they’ll last at least a few months.’’

As a side note, squishies have been around for a while too, at least since
last year. My son is a big fan of them. I'm pretty sure he learned about them
from YouTube kids, which sometimes seems like trove of toy commercials. Unlike
what Ms. Osborne seems to think, I don't think fads in the future will be any
shorter, I think they'll just be created in different ways.

~~~
rconti
In the late 80s or early 90s there was a stress reliever squishy thing that
was pink and had some odd shape.. I want to say like a brain or something. And
of course stress balls have been trade show junk for decades.

------
Giorgi
I think it started on Reddit, someone posted some gif, others asked what it
was, and after several months we had craze going on our hands.

I remember specifically how I checked if any Chinese manufacturers where
producing it by that time - none. In fact, item in post on reddit was done on
some CNC machine.

then all the small-scale importers got on it. These days, it's really easy to
move and market your own product small-scale.

I think all other fads will follow this fate - lot's of suppliers, rarely any
brandname.

~~~
lbotos
I mean we saw the same thing with "hoverboards" right? There was never a
"branded" one, just a bunch of Chinese manufacturer brands.

------
bitwize
This week on Hackernews: criticizing big companies for turning toy crazes into
huge profits.

Last week on Hackernews: a paean to Wham-O, manufacturers of the hula hoop.

------
tinus_hn
I'm not sure a simple fad like the fidget spinner that explodes out of nowhere
is the same as a meticulously marketed toy line.

------
graphememes
Same thing happens with twitter lynch mobs. Another day, another victim.

