An executive toy is a novelty item that is usually a small mechanical gadget placed on the desk of a corporate executive or other office workers. They have no work-related function, but are usually interesting to look at and entertaining.
The first executive toy may have been a gadget designed by the great mathematician and engineer Philo of Byzantium (about 280 BC - about 220 BC), an octagon-shaped ink pot with openings on each side. One could turn the pot so that any face is on top and dip the pen in the opening, but the ink never ran out through the holes on other sides. The inkwell was suspended in the centre on a series of gimbals and remained stationary in spite of any rotation.
Examples of executive toys include:
- Ant farm
- Baoding Balls
- Crookes radiometer
- EcoSphere (closed Aquarium)
- Etch A Sketch
- Hoberman sphere
- Liquid motion toy (Dripper or Wave Motion variants)
- Drinking bird
- Magic 8-Ball
- Mechanical puzzle
- Musical box
- Nanoblocks, a system of plastic building blocks similar to Lego but about half the linear dimensions. Most finished models are designed to be tiny, of a size suitable for an office desk decoration.
- Newton's cradle, where a set of metal balls are suspended from above, one is pulled from the rest and kicks them, transferring the kinetic energy to the last one.
- Perpetual pendulum, which doesn't stop due to an electric magnet in the base of the toy.
- Pin Art, a box with thousands of small pins of equal length inserted into a board, that can be pressed from one side with any object so that the other ends of the pins form a three-dimensional image of the object on the other side of the board.
- USB toys, small gadgets or toys which draw their electrical power from the USB or Universal serial bus on a computer.
- Rubik's Cube
- Novelty lighter
- Novelty Magnet
- Small plastic magnetic pigs, sheep, etc.
- Top
- Yo-yo
- Paddle ball
- Squirt gun
- Snow globe
- Lava lamp
- Plasma globe
- Decorative paperweight
- Neodymium magnet toys
- Magnetic face toy (Fuzzy Face, Wooly Willy, etc.)
- Mechanical bank
- Fake Aquarium
- Stress ball
- Ferrofluid toy
- Zen Garden
- Sand Pendulum
- Hourglass
Famous quotes containing the words executive and/or toy:
“Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book.... The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.”
—Groucho Marx (1895–1977)