#magic spring

[image description: a yellow, green and blue plastic half-size slinky or magic spring sitting in a bent upside-down U shape on a round red and green watermelon slice pillow. The pillow sits on a white, black and blue night sky quilt cover.]

Rainbow Magic Spring - K-Mart, $1 AUD.

Dimensions: 6.5 cm high x 7.5 cm across.

For stimmers local to a K-Mart store and wanting a very cheap stim toy, it’s pretty hard to go past these knock-off Slinkies. They’re $1.

The plastic is pretty thin and I’ve tangled mine up at least fifty times, so they’re not as easy to use as a good metal Slinky. The end coils sit inside the spring, too, making it even easier for the end sections to be caught around coils two or three layers down. They’re half-size springs, so they don’t stretch as far as a full-size spring or metal Slinky.

The thing I like best about this one, aside from the price, is that it isn’t pink. All the plastic multi-coloured half or full-size magic springs/magic coils I’ve seen in various dollar shops have a little or a lot pink, so I was pleased to find one without. (I don’t hate the colour pink, but I also find too much of it, since it is strongly associated with things feminine and female, to be dysphoria triggering. I’d be very uncomfortable with a stim kit that’s half or mostly pink.) Having a wider variety of colour options, especially for masculine and trans/NB stimmers, is an awesome thing.

I saw these in various colour combinations, most being yellow/pink, yellow/green and green/pink.

(Small slinky anon again!) The tiny slinky is magnetic!!! Oh happy days!! The tumblr ask system is so rotten i’ll see if i can find the product on amazon, but idk if it would work? Maybe you could use this as a springboard for a slinky post…? 💜

(its slinky anon again!!) Sorry about the last ask - i meant as the post could be a springboard for the follower community to comment about slinkies!!! Not to demand you made a post or anything!! (Anyway,, you have a wonderful blog!! Keep up the fantastic work!!!) 💜             

Slinky anon, I have never, ever found a cool stim toy under my couch (just tissues and cat hair) so congratulations on your discovery. The stim gods are with you, it seems! Thank you so much for the compliment, both for my own sake and on behalf of the mod crew who are helping me so much. And it’s no worries! I’m happy to talk about slinkies at any time!

I may have just taken my purple metal slinky to the fridge to see if it is magnetic, but sadly, it isn’t.

I love slinkies and I adore my metal slinky. The feel, movement and sound it makes is absolutely divine - I really do love fidget toys that provide multiple sensory feedback, and the slinky does this so well.

Mini plastic slinkies are easy to find - just about every store with a party section will have them as party favours, with varying quality. This set of six for $2 AUD from K-Mart are pretty good - the plastic isn’t too thin and the slinky doesn’t get pushed out of shape. Or you can get fifty of them for $10.43 USD on Amazon, just in case you want to give them out to all your stimming friends!

Sadly, I don’t have a good experience myself with the mini metal slinkies I’ve found locally. I bought this slinky from Toyworld here in Australia (and saw this same slinky with identical packaging for sale at Sensory Oasis for Kids) and while it sounded and felt great, it left blue dye all over my hands and got so hopelessly tangled I threw it away. I don’t recommend buying these at all.

I found a listing on Amazon for 12 mini metal slinkies for $8.82 USD and $5.89 USD shipping to Australia, and an ebay listing from the US with 6 mini metal slinkies for $5.99 USD plus $5.99 USD shipping to Australia. (I’d expect folks shipping within the US to pay less shipping on both listings.) None of these slinkies are dyed, so they shouldn’t have the problems I did with the colour wearing onto your hands. I’d like to get one, because I really like the portability of the small slinkies, as you said, anon!

(A note on search terms: because “slinky” is the trademarked name, you might also wish to search for “spring” or “coil”.)

If anyone has any good sources for these stim toys of awesome, please comment away and I’ll add them to this post.

But thank you, anon, for sharing your discovery and your joy in your discovery with us. We love getting to talk about awesome toys!

Benvenuta Primavera ツ