Judging from the conversations I’ve heard and the postings on the Promotional Products Professionals Facebook page, there’s not much joy in Promoville as distributors chase down the latest silly fad item for their trend-following clients. We’ve all seen it before – a retail product comes on the scene out of nowhere, and the end-user clients jump on it. Why? Because it’s cheap and popular. No matter how hard you’ve worked to train the client that NOT doing what everybody else is doing is the way to go, you’re reduced to racing to the bottom in the price-and-product game.
But, if you want to really dig your heels in and preach differentiation like you mean it, you’re in luck. I have the perfect reason to NOT sell today’s must-have gadget – the now ubiquitous fidget spinners. They affect the Earth’s center of gravity.
According to published professor and physicist Michael Taylor of Denver, “Gravitational pull is an invisible force that causes massive objects to pull other objects towards them. In the case of fidget spinners, if enough of them are rotating in unison, they have the potential to create enough gravitational pull to affect the orbit of the planet. Many people may not realize this, but earth’s center of gravity is not as stable as you think. A harmonized cascade of these fidget spinners, aligned in the direction of their spin, could be enough to modify the planet’s center of gravity to the point that we deviate from our normal orbit.”
Of course, according to Snopes.com, this is a totally fabricated story from Focus Times. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
But, of course, if you want some real facts, there are those from the last couple of weeks, too. There’s the 10-year-old in Texas who choked on a loose part, and the five-year-old in Oregon who required surgery to remove a part that had snapped off. His mom said she had even warned him. “I showed him pictures and said, ‘Never put that in your mouth,’” Joey Morelos, a 23-year-old mom in Albany, Oregon, told BuzzFeed News. “I guess he didn’t listen that well.”
For those trying to rationalize the need for fidget spinners, they’re positioned as a stress-relieving toy to help people focus. Scott Kollins, clinical psychologist and director of the ADHD program at Duke University, says there is no evidence to support claims of the benefits of fidget spinners. “There has been no research into the efficacy or safety of these toys to help manage the symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, or any other mental health conditions in children (or adolescent, or adults, for that matter),” Kollins told ABC News in a interview. “It’s hard to imagine any sort of reasonable rationale as to why they would offer benefit.”
The CPSC has also weighed in, "We advise parents to keep these away from young children because they can choke on small parts. Warn older children not to put fidget spinners in their mouths."
So, like any other product you are considering for your clients, you need to do a realistic risk analysis with them. Does the benefit of them giving away a popular cheap item outweigh the potential injuries to both their customers, and their brand?
Jeff Jacobs has been an expert in building brands and brand stewardship for more than 35 years, working in commercial television, Hollywood film and home video, publishing, and promotional brand merchandise. He’s a staunch advocate of consumer product safety and has a deep passion and belief regarding the issues surrounding compliance and corporate social responsibility. He recently retired as executive director of Quality Certification Alliance, the only non-profit dedicated to helping suppliers provide safe and compliant promotional products. Before that, he was director of brand merchandise for Michelin. As a recovering end-user client, he can’t help but continue to consult Fortune 500 consumer brands on promo product safety when asked. You can also find him working as a volunteer Guardian ad Litem, traveling the world with his lovely wife, or enjoying a cigar at his favorite local cigar shop. Follow Jeff on Twitter, or reach out to him at jacobs.jeffreyp@gmail.com.