Fidget spinner inventor reveals she hasn’t made money off her invention

World: The woman who created the fidget spinner never saw any money out of the boom in popularity her invention enjoyed.

Fidget spinners were everywhere back in 2017, then as retailers sold tens of millions of the little gizmos which have probably ended up next to the Beyblades in countless landfill sites by now.

Some people loved them so much they ate them, others simply hated them and some people made heaps of cash selling them.

However, the toy’s original inventor Catherine Hettinger never managed to cash in on the craze.

She says she came up with the original idea for the fidget spinner back in 1993 and tried to pitch it to a number of toy retailers, including Hasbro, but they turned her down.

Catherine got a patent for her invention in 1997, but by 2005, it had expired as she couldn’t afford the $400 (AED1,470) renewal fee to hold onto the rights to the device, meaning anyone could make their own version or design of the fidget spinner without running into any legal issues.

Fast forward to 2014, and Scott McCoskery invented something he called the Torqbar, which was basically a fidget spinner.

He said he invented it because he wanted something to focus his hands on during meetings at work so he wouldn’t fidget as much while his boss droned on.

It would still take a few years before they really skyrocketed in popularity, but fidget spinners went on to become one of the most popular toys of the ‘new 10s’ (or whatever it is we’re calling the previous decade).

Not holding the patent and not making the toys herself, Hettinger was left making absolutely no money out of the fidget spinner craze, which sold millions of toys around the world.

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She also accepted that most inventions just didn’t make money, though suspected things could have been very different if someone had just invested in her all those years ago.

Source: Agencies