Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Guy: (The Original) (RP Minis) Paperback – October 2, 2018

Got these for my employees for their desks. They are so fun to watch.

Very cute. Fun. As expected. My kid loves it.

My son loved it. It is very loud though and works best with the DC adapter that I bought after I had ordered it.

I received this as a stocking stuffer from my wife... a small gag because of my love of a family guy gag.I open it - it needs a battery - common enough.But can I open the battery compartment with my hands? No! It is sealed with a tiny phillips head screw - too small to get a regular screwdriver into, requiring me to go to my tools to fish out a sufficiently small headed screw driver.I get it opened and go to where I have batteries, careful to hang onto the tiny screwdriver to close it. But does it need a common battery? No - it needs a 9V - the kind that I used to keep around for smoke detectors but now not even smoke detectors use them.So I have to scour the house for a 9V battery, still looking for this to but a smile on my face. I find one and put it in only to discover that in my battery search, I've set down the tiny screw driver which I have to find. Now to close it up. Lo and behold the battery compartment is not the type that unlocks but holds the screw... the tiny screw is completely gone.Lastly - my item completely didn't work. It was getting power because the fan would turn for little bit but there was no waving. This actually wouldn't get a 1 star review from me though because I understand that sometimes items are just defective or break in transit. What makes me write this is the experience of using this. This is an item that needs to just work with limited user setup - it's a gag after all. You can't have users for this chasing down special tools and relatively rarely used batteries. You may say, aren't these your own problems - I'd argue that these are the results of unforgivable design negligence. There is no way the makers of this product actually walked through the total user experience of using this item (which I remind you is a novelty product with no practical application - not a life saving device) from unboxing to end and decided this was acceptable. Instead of getting a chuckle (the intent of the item), I was absolutely enraged by the time I was ready to flip the power switch - and on Christmas morning.

This wacky guy was fun, but despite following recommended battery it only worked when I used an AC adapter (one I happen to have that would fit, it doesn’t come with an adapter)It’s a bit of a bummer because my son wanted to use it on his desk but there isn’t a plug close by. I figured I’d just get batteries. I purchased the recommended type of 9v battery and the machine barely turned on and definitely wasn’t powerful enough to do what it was intended.

Works great and was a huge hit as a gift to someone who loves Tube Guy.

Beautiful.

My first attempt at obtaining a “Wacky Wavy” experience, I bought one of these. When I tried it with just a simple, brand new Duracell alkaline, I generally received the results that many did - not the least bit “wacky”. The instructions say “9 volt” but not just any 9 volt. If you want to use a battery at all, it needs to be either an “upper tier” version of the usual name brand batteries, or the recommended NiCad, or nickel cadmium rechargeable. Do yourself a favor and read the enclosed instructions FIRST before you buy, and you will save yourself a lot of disappointment and returns. The best option for me was to use an AC to DC adapter, one of which I had, of the correct voltage and tip polarity.So I set it up, plugged it in, and - nothing, at least initially. Just sat there. Then with no warning after a minute or two it just started going - just as you would hope it would, but again, initially. After a minute or two I began to hear the sound of the fan changing, and it appeared to be faltering. Finally it just stopped entirely. Verifying my adapter was working properly, I plugged it in and tried again. This time it started right away, but after about 4 or 5 minutes it again died completely.Undeterred, I went and bought another, along with an accompanying Wacky Wavy “Tube Gal”. While Tube Gal arrived as you would expect, in a properly packaged and sealed box, my second “Tube Guy” was anything but. As soon as I saw the bulging box and broken seal, I knew what was going on. When I opened it to look, it was even worse than I expected. Whoever had it before me had themselves clearly struggled to make it perform - so much that the nylon had been completely torn a full third down from the top - where I guess they thought making the hole at the top bigger it would work better, but I expect they discovered the had only made it worse. So, there were also snippets of Scotch tape where I guess they were trying to correct their fatal mistake. Folks, the people who designed this thing did a pretty good job determining how best to make these things work, so when you try this kind of modification (likely due to not fully reading the instructions) you will ruin it, and only end up disappointing yourself. So as the saying from an old commercial goes, “reading is fundamental”. This no less applies the the enclosed instructions. And the bonus for the REST of us? Easy - we don’t end up receiving someone else’s trash from Amazon (though I have to give a solid “thumbs down” to the people there who carelessly never inspected this obvious return, but instead just grabbed it and sent it to me as it was. Well, they’re getting this one back. Hope someone else doesn’t get hosed like I did with the same piece of junk that this one is.