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I've been meaning to post this item for a long while...
It's not what you think it is.
It's not a dryerball, although it might substitute for one, if the temperature in the dryer were cool or warm. It seems to be made of a somewhat pliant plastic (vinyl?), but the spikes are not soft.
I bought it in 1999 as a stocking stuffer for my mother. I was walking through a department store in Frankfurt, Germany and spotted the prickly object in a section selling health items. A sales person explained to me that it was a massage aid.
Well, my mom didn't like it. Too uncomfortable for her.
So she gave it to me. And I keep it around as a curio, and occasionally roll it on an aching spot on a hand.
Last month, I finally saw a pair of dryerballs in a store. You know, the kind AS SEEN ON TV. (There is something affirming and validating about the use of capital letters, so let me repeat: AS SEEN ON TV!) They seemed to be about the same size as mine, but made of a different type of plastic. I think they were harder, but not heavier. Oh and they were colored a light blue.
(I should add that there's another brand with an oval shape. I'm not sure how they compare in size and substance.)
Since my curiousity has been aroused, I've been trying to find out more about these dryerballs, and the best I can tell, they were invented by a man in Vancouver, by the name of James Richards.
Somehow, the dryerball is related to a patent for a spherical hand-and-finger massage device that contains a vibration generator. (My description borrows language from the patent.) This massage device was invented by a man named Otto Wu of Taipei.
(You'd think with a name like that, he would've invented a nuclear fusion device or a perpetual motion machine, but I suppose resources in Taipei are not yet aligned to solve those types of problems.)
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You know, I don't know where this is all leading (or from what point it all originated), but I'll bet there's a fascinating story, here, that James Burke could tease out.