The Fidget Spinner Craze and How We Got There

by Andrew Bagel-Brown Business and Marketing

The world is flooded with a new craze every other day. The recent season welcomed fidget spinners—a gadget that is believed to help stress and anxiety.

Ironically, it is kids who use the stress reliever the most, but where did it all begin?

How did fidget spinners get the hype they have in such a tiny bit of time?

In this article, we will briefly take you through the Fidget Spinner craze.

The Inception

Not many people know where fidget spinners began their journey.

Well, the woman behind the glorified gadget is Catherine Hettinger from Orlando.

Unfortunately for her, there wasn’t any patent on the current design.

In other words, while companies make hundreds of thousands selling these spinners, Catherine struggles with her financial stability.

It was back when Catherine was suffering from an autoimmune disorder that she got the idea of making the first fidget spinner.

Since she was weak, she faced great difficulty in picking up toys for her daughter.

This led her to tape up several of her daughter’s toys together. Her daughter would then play with those toys as a whole.

This ignited the idea of a fidget spinner in Catherine’s mind.

The Hype

Catherine created the “spinning toy” as she called it, back in the late 90s.

Despite showcasing her creation at toy conventions, she wasn’t given much attention.

It was until recent years that toys like Beyblades became popular and thus, it was only a matter of time before the fidget spinner caught the eye of the market.

Apart from being an attractive toy for children, the reason why it got great hype was that this toy helped you with fidgeting.

Studies have also shown that fidgeting helps you retain better focus while keeping your mind away from obsessive thoughts.

Some even believe that fidgeting is an essential aspect of expressing yourself. With evidence like such as this, the spinning toys got the name fidget spinner.

This benefit also was a key reason why the spinner attained the great hype it did recently.

The Fidgeting Craze

There have been a lot of events held in light of the infamous fidget spinner recently.

Most of them have been held by YouTubers.

One of the most famous events was hosted by Jelle Baker who has over 250,000 subscribers on the channel Jelle’s Marble Runs.

The game called MarbleLympics has a competition that revolved around fidget spinners.

There has also been a relatively popular game called the “spinz.io”.

It was a massive hit. Over 260,000 spinz.to videos hit YouTube with the first few weeks of the release.

There has also been a wide range of minor events and competitions revolving around the fidget spinner this year.

The hype of this gadget thus continues to increase. This is also because researchers have pointed towards its therapeutic benefits for mental illness.

One way or the other, fidget spinners have sure been one of the most popular trends of this year so far.

You can a fidget spinner at pretty much any retail shop, or order it online to join the fidgeting craze.

Image: Pixabay CC0 License