KCTTCH Luxury Pure Copper Spinning Top, $12
Life Game EDC Accurate Spinning Top, Precision Stainless Steel, $12
DjuiinoStar 4" Spinning Top Base, Double Concave, 100mm, $10
About
One of the things I wanted to accomplish with the "play every game in the game room project" was not only to play all of the games but to see what other rabbit holes some of them might lead to.
The first one of those rabbit holes was the Spinjas, or fighting tops. A fun little toy good for a beer or two, but having recently seen the move Inception, I got to thinking, "just how long will a top spin for?". This led to some very interesting places including magnetically induced spinning tops, and the all mechanical LIMBO which is the current world record holder for battery-powered spinning tops.
Staying away from magnetics and micro motors I found the Foreverspin first, which look incredible and have great marketing. Unfortunately, after some research it seems that even the heavy ones don't seem to spin for more than about 2 minutes. I was also not interested in the $50 price tag.
What I eventually found were the KCTTCH and Life Game tops for about $12 with a $10 glass base.
So what did I find?
You can break a 5:00 minute spin time with either of the tops when used on the glass base. On a softer material like plastic you can just get to 2:00 minutes.
Full Results
Because if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
I though the best way to test was to compare both tops vs the Spinjas with each tested on the plastic Spinja base and the glass base. After a few spins for each, I got some interesting results.
My Best Spin 5:27
Interesting Notes
- I expected that the hand spun tops would be variable, but I was surprised by variation in the mechanically spun Spinjas.
- The Green Spinja has a defect on the bottom that you can hear while spinning. I'm guessing that is the reason that the spinning surface didn't make that much difference.
- While spinning on glass did work better, there was a surprising overlap in times.
- A "good spin" make all the difference, be it mechanical or by hand.
| Green Plastic |
Green Glass |
Red Plastic |
Red Glass |
KCTTCH Plastic |
KCTTCH Glass |
Life Game Plastic |
Life Game Glass |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plastic | Glass | Plastic | Glass | Plastic | Glass | Plastic | Glass |
| 0:36 | 0:36 | 0:42 | 0:57 | 1:49 | 2:56 | 2:00 | 4:18 |
| 0:38 | 0:47 | 0:43 | 1:08 | 1:55 | 2:59 | 2:06 | 4:18 |
| 0:40 | 0:48 | 0:44 | 1:10 | 1:57 | 3:24 | 2:07 | 4:18 |
| 0:40 | 0:48 | 0:46 | 1:27 | 3:01 | 4:12 | 2:46 | 4:24 |
| 0:43 | 0:51 | 0:46 | 1:29 | 5:08 | 4:24 | ||
| 0:44 | 0:52 | 0:59 | 1:35 | 5:18 | 4:59 | ||
| 0:59 | 1:01 | 0:59 | 2:32 | 5:07 | |||
| 1:26 | 1:04 | 1:16 | 2:40 | 5:12 | |||
| 1:19 | 5:27 | ||||||
| 1:24 | |||||||
| 1:26 | |||||||
| 1:42 |
And just why did I spend all this time? Let's just say it's the perfect activity for a beach trip while drinking a beer and watching the waves come in. :)
Trivia
- The Amazon Site for the Steel top has a "customer record" page with a current record time of 7:48.
- The current world record for the Longest Non-Mechanical Top Spin is 51:03
5-24-2021