All I Want Is to Touch This Shiny, Black ‘Fidget Putty’
February 24, 2023Why do we fidget? Or perhaps, at the very least, why do I fidget? Is it because my parents yelled at each other when I was a baby? Because 9/11 happened when my brain wasn’t fully formed? Because one time I was misdiagnosed with Lyme disease for a year by a quack orthopedist? I don’t know, y’all. This world just makes me nervous. But it’s fine, because the Huberman Lab guy says fidgeting is good for you, or, at the very least, that it burns hundreds of extra calories a day. Leg wiggling, Kegel flexing, toe tapping—in some strange ways, these things provide a healthy outlet for the volcano of thoughts within.
So if you’re anything like me (over 30% of Americans reportedly suffer from anxiety disorders in some form; honestly, I’d guess it’s more), you may be familiar with fidget toys, which are little ASMR-driven doodads that are designed for fidgeting to give you an outlet for all of that misdirected primordial fear. There are countless versions out there, including the classic fidget spinners that had the world in a chokehold in 2017, kinetic sand, slime, bubble poppers, silicone ravioli, and more. However, the latest fidget toy that I’m salivating over is this magnetic fidget putty from Speks.
Why, you ask? Well, as a child of the 90s, I spent a lot of time in Sharper Image stores and looking through Skymall catalogs, and this kind of thing is like catnip to me. What kind of thing? Objets that look straight out off the shelves of the Star Trek Enterprise. This “putty” is actually sort of a very large-scale sand, a bunch of little smooth, shiny magnetic rocks that stick together and fall apart while making incredibly pleasing clinking noises. With their powerful Prometheus vibe, these glossy little stones are squishable, stackable, and wildly satisfying to mess around with, pick up, drop, tap, and massage. I simply must revel in the sound of them swirling in my hands. Don’t they look a bit like caviar?
You carry around a little tin of them and can periodically dig into it like they’re chewing tobacco. You can fidget with them on a plane, under the table at a terrible first Hinge date, or offscreen whilst getting berated by your boss on a Zoom call. The applications are endless.
Seriously, though, I neeeeeed to touch the tiny rocks. Speks makes a ton of other magnetic fidget toys (ranging from “Fleks” to “Spokes” to “Supers” and beyond), but something about this particular “putty” is just… sexy, like having one of those miniature rock gardens on your huge, rosewood desk in an office with floor-to-ceiling windows. After all, those were very chic, but at the end of the day, they were just something decorative that doubled as stress relief.
Crags fidget putty is available at Speks.
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