A few years ago, I was cruising the garage sales around town when I saw a solid collection of old games and toys- I looked through, and though most were in really good shape, I was really only interested in one thing- the spirograph. I took a peek inside and everything was there- all the wheels, two circular tracks, two straight tracks, and all the pieces needed to put together a custom track. One was limited only by imagination and the number of pins one could find to hold it all down. There were even the four original ball point pens (no longer working), a cardboard pad and a bunch of designs made by some previous owner. Awesome, given that the date on the box was 1969. Better still, I later realized that the set was manufactured in Toronto, at the former toy factory that now houses my good friends Joseph+Jaime.
When I bought it, I knew it would be a while before I got the chance to pull it out and show it to the kids- even leaving motor skills aside, drool on the paper tends to weaken it and make the ink run. But this morning, our time had come! Fisher went exploring in one of the storage closets for new distractions and we rediscovered the hypotrochoid goodness that is spirography.
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