Silly, high-tech gadgets capture exec interest

There’s an almost universal penchant for people to fiddle with things, and executives are certainly no exception.

The odd thing about executives is that they seem to be psychically split in two. Sure, they like things like Personal Digital Assistants and cell phones and gadgets of that type, but they also like things from the opposite side of the spectrum. x09

Here’s a good example: Pat Talley is the owner of Life of the Party, which sells costumes and wigs and party paraphernalia in the 100 block of South College in Fort Collins. If you ask her what makes good executive gifts, she’ll mention games that come in sets, like backgammon, chess and cribbage.

Julia Price, manager of It’s Your Move, a game and toy store in the Foothills Mall in Fort Collins, will tell you the same thing. “(Executives) like something simple that might be relaxing and take their mind off work,” which chess and cribbage would probably do.

But the No. 1 seller at Life of the Party — and executives get a lot of them along with everyone else — is the remote-controlled fart machine, which comes in two parts; the module that makes the sound and the controller.

Also big is the “Fickle Finger,” which Talley said is a box that sits on a desk and plays classical music while slowly raising an offending digit. These are not the kinds of things you’d imagine executives having or displaying, but the hired help sure buys them as gifts.

“It’s probably more secretaries buying things for bosses,” Talley said. “I think guys like to fiddle with things. It’s a different type of nervous.” These kinds of gadgets will run somewhere between $15 and $20.

A step up from something like the Fickle Finger would be a desktop item like the frame that holds about five or six clacking metal balls in it. “We sell a lot of those,” Price said. “We also sell this thing that you turn over and it drips. It’s called Turn Me Over. Those little Rubik’s cubes are popular, too. Anything that’s a brain-teaser.”

The category of desktop items includes office supplies, too. Steve Baisden, a spokesman in Cleveland, Ohio, for Office Max, said that means things like desk clocks, pen and pencil sets and letter-opener sets. They are simple, functional and useful.

Yet when you think of executives, you think of electronic gadgets, like door openers or cigar lighters. There is something neat about doing a mundane task from across the room with the press of a button, and there is a thrill to be on the technological cutting edge. Some examples include: