#cube spinner

Paint Splatter Cube Spinner/Gyro Cube - eBay, $1.69 USD.

Dimensions: 3.2 cm3

Item has free standard international shipping. I paid only $1.49 USD for this item.

I liked my red cube spinner so much that when eBay showed me this auction with a coloured paint splatter spinner from a seller offering a buy-2-items-and-get-a-discount deal, I had to pick it up.

It took three and a half weeks to arrive, and arrived in a padded envelope. The box was a little squished, but that’s normal for these sorts of very cheap listings.

This cube is bigger than the red cube and feels cheaper. It’s lighter, it has raised seam lines along the edges of the cube and a couple of areas of raised plastic, a couple almost sharp to touch. It’s not as nice to handle or stroke--it feels like the difference between the fake and Zuru or Antsy Labs fidget cubes, even though my red cube is also imitation. The cheaper plastic and lighter weight is off-putting to me; I don’t much like touching it.

It only spins for about half as long as the red cube, and it does make a light plastic rattling noise whilst spinning.

Like many fake Tangles, the paint-effect is printed on, and close up or under a camera’s magnification, the dots are quite obvious. Unlike many fake Tangles, there’s only a few places along the very edge of the cube pieces that haven’t taken the print, and these aren’t visible unless you’re looking for it. As a printed stim toy, in terms of coverage, it’s one of the better items I own.

As pretty as this is, I prefer the plain red cube as a stim toy, and the smaller size makes it easier to carry around. As a decorative desk piece, though, the paint splatter spinner is extremely gorgeous, and I really do love the bright, mottled colours.

Image description under read more cut:

[Image description: A cube-shaped spinner constructed of a cube with a  cylinder 'cut-out' from one vertex to another, meaning that when held by those two vertices, the rest of the cube will spin around it.]

Cube Spinner - $11 AUD

@stimtoybox - a spinner shaped like a cube! I’ve seen a similar listing on ebay but lost track of it and it’s a tricky thing to find with keywords.

[Individual image descriptions under cut.]

[image description: a red cube spinner sitting on a red watermelon slice background. The spinner has been partially rotated so the ends of the spinner have been pushed out at an angle, allowing it to perch sideways. When viewed flat, the top face of the spinner has an L-shaped panel surrounding a thumb-sized D-shape panel, and either panel can be grasped between two fingers and spun.]

Cube Spinner - eBay, $2.79 USD.

Dimensions: 3 cm3.

Item has free standard international shipping.

This is a cheap knock-off of the SpinCube, and I admit that I’m reviewing it not knowing what the SpinCube is like to use. I am interested in one day getting my hands on one, though, because I really like this cube spinner.

I have to admit that this just doesn’t spin as long as a standard tri-shaped spinner. My longest spin time on the cube spinner is twenty-seven seconds. If you’re after long spin times, you’re better off getting a conventional spinner.

Unlike a tri-shaped spinner, though, you can spin this one two ways, depending on which two corners of the spinner you grasp. You can hold it by the larger central piece and spin the smaller D-shaped ends, so it spins vertically, or you can hold it by the smaller D-shaped ends and spin the central piece, so it spins horizontally. It’s very quiet, too--only my Zuru spinner is quieter, making this preferable for public spaces. It also doesn’t vibrate anywhere near as much as a tri-spinner, and it’s much lighter. (It’s not even as heavy as a knock-off fidget cube; my Tangles weigh more than this does.) I can’t use a spinner for long periods of time because of the weight, and I don’t have this problem at all with the cube spinner.

(Note: I don’t know if the metal cube spinners are much, if any, heavier. I suspect that they might be.)

The ABS plastic is very smooth, making it a nice fidget for touching and stroking. I often grab one of the pieces and just rotate it back and forth, and it’s easier to fidget this way--moving the spinner without fully spinning it--with the cube spinner than it is a tri-shaped spinner. Despite the lack of weight, it doesn’t feel at all flimsy and has endured a lot of dropping on my part.

It’s a little trickier to use, as I sometimes end up with my fingers on the wrong part of the spinner, but that’s my only complaint.

[Image description: a black cube spinner with coloured stickers on each side, cut with a border between the edge of the sticker and the edge of the cube, in the style of a rubik’s cube. The visible sides are red, white and blue.]

Rubik’s Cube Fidget Spinner - $32.39 AUD