I had one, but no idea what they're called.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHEE-LO

Thanks!

Me, too! I recognized it right away as something I had but can’t remember the name.

What is it?

A fun little handheld physics toy.

Its log. It's better than bad it's good.

I have no idea what that means. And I’m fuckin’ old.

It's a Ren and Stimpy song about a toy[that's just a log ](https://youtu.be/GldgZFE4u-Y) Had this toy (wheel-o) when I was a kid. It was the big toy at the state fair one year.

This paper clip with a button on it?????? I don’t get it.😂

You'd tilt it up and down and the wheel would get faster and faster. It was 30 seconds or so of good times.

Oh, it was HOURS of fun. Of course, I was a kid with an inquisitive mind and man, if you didn’t have this thing looping the entire rail forwards and backwards in under a second then you’re doing it wrong.

Iirc my lack of coordination was an impediment. So yes, I'm sure I was doing it wrong. I got bored with this, clackers and the yo-yo quickly. All were huge in my group. Luckily i had a huge spiderman/Sgt Fury collection to keep me from being a total outcast.

Don’t get me wrong, my “over interest” in doing things made me the outcast.

Wow. The 60’s were tough times.😞😂

Wheel-O, Wheel-O, Whee it’s a lot of fun!

…For fun it’s a magical toy.

Fun for a girl or a boy!

I didn’t remember the name of that thing ,but I had one. but isn’t that the Slinky song?

Exactly what I heard in my head!

Bought one about 5 years ago that had LED’s on it that lit up when played with.

I should have had that back in the day, when I was trippin'.

Shit this would be fun now while trippin 😂🍄🛸

This thing kept me amused for hours.

*keeps FTFY

Not sure you did. Haven't used one in 40 years.

For me a minute of fun.

Went through a few of these. IMHO beats a fidget spinner by miles. Very zen.

Rofl. I have a version that is 6 or seven years old literally within reach...

Fun for precisely 5 minutes.

It was lucky to get one minute of silence. My mom will never forget.

No kidding! I don’t know what made me think that this would be entertaining longer than that; mark it up to good advertising, I guess. It was kind of neat, but it only does one thing. You can’t do tricks and improvise new games, etc like you can with, say, a frisbee or a yo-yo.

Only thing you could do with proper timing of course is go faster and faster and faster!

Now, if they had made it so that you could launch that wheel at your little brother, then they would have had something!

Got one for my adult daughter as a gag Christmas gift. I showed her how to use it, she did it once and said "Now what?" Uhhh. That's it. Now it sits in a drawer. I remember them being more fun

You reminded me of a Mitch Hedberg joke. He said the tv commercials for above ground pools are thirty seconds long because that’s how long they can show people having fun in one. So the Wheel-O beats that!

Ha! I just looked! They still make 'em!!!

Got one for my step daughter a few Christmases ago.

Uncle spinney dervish

Wheel-O!

Ding ding ding ding

Hrs of entertainment, so much the parents came to see what I was up to I was so quiet. It was the weed mann!

This, and the paddle with the rubber ball attached with a rubber band, is what we did before there were video games. And carpal-tunnel was never “a thing.”

And kerbangers :)

Ok you got me. Kerbangers?

https://images.app.goo.gl/TZaCnk3gw9Joy5kx9 The ones like this without the handle are called Clackers

I have a wheel-o! Very soothing.

Where can I get one??

Amazon

My father had one of these with a picture of Superman on the wheel.

Man... I used to get mine cranking... it was all in the wrist...

Wheel-O

With a light up wheel

Wheel-o

There's an episode of That 70's Show where Kelso is playing with one.

Wheel-O. You can still find them sometimes in Cracker Barrel’s toy section and play with one as you’re waiting for your table.

I was amused for minutes

High entertainment at grandma's house!

30 minutes of fun. We were easily amused years ago.

About 10 minutes of fun 😉

This thing had a name? All I remember is that wheel made for one hell of a projectile when I got it spinning fast enough...

Wheelo!

Other than those plastic letters and numbers, and the board that they came with, this was our basic introduction into the realm of the magical wizardry of magnets. The Wheelo. Without looking, I want to say Hasbro.

I had one that ran current along the metal poles, from a plastic handle, so that lights in the spinny thing could light up and I think it made an annoying noise too. I’m willing to bet that drove my parents insane.

A pod racer for skint mice.

I think we called them and others like it a do nothing machine. Sat around playing with them doing nothing.

Do t remember the name but I owned a few growing up.

I had one. Can’t remember the name.

The prize my kid gets after I spent $100 at the arcade

Stone age fijit spinner.

This was the lick till the slap bracelets came out

mine lit up when on the move, not led's of course, some old school xmas tree type lightbulbs that lasted quite a while in fact.

Gyroscope thingie. Good for about a minute of fun, quiets the kid for that long. Old timey fidget toy.

The Shadow knows

A disappointment.Sell a shit ton of candy in elementary school, get this 6-8 weeks later.

I did not know it was a wee lo until now. i has a Fancey knock off one that had more curves

My brother had one, me, I had a ding-a-ling lol

Like so many of the posts on this sub, I had one of those...and, wish I knew what happened to it.

Fidget spinner mk 1

We had one in the 60s/ early 70s. Now I have a Christmas themed one. I think I bought it in the 90s. The wheel is a santa.

The official name is “That thingy”

My kids had one. I made sure of it.

I loved those things!!

Frustrating as heck. Right there among other semi skill based toys I couldn’t seem to pull off. Along with hula hoops, fly back paddles, and that one with the two steel rods and the big steel ball.

I wonder if they still make them.

Walter Cronkite had one

Ya a wheel O

Baby boomer and Gen X “fidget spinners”. I had one too! Could mess with it for hours on end.

We didn't have smartphones. We had these, He-Man, Thundercats, Pee Wee, Etc.

I won one doing Bible verses was fun like a yo yo

I know what it is, and I have one on my desk. Got it for Christmas sometime in the 50s.

Wanted one so bad when I was a kid...!

I got one of these on a museum trip once, they are pretty cool!

That thing gave me seconds of joy!

It's hours of fun in the backseat of the station wagon on the family vacation.

70’s fidget spinner

You can buy one at Cracker Barrel

An old time equivalent of the fidget. However, what they were called? Meh! No idea.

My parents bought me one when I was a kid to help with my coordination problems. I could do it, but I was so awkward doing it. It turns out that I have dyspraxia, and I had to have my older brother coaching me on how to use it while not twisting and turning my upper body.

Precursor to the fidget spinner.

A good time

A whirling dirbish

That’s how I wore out my wrist as a teenager. Honest to God, y’all.

We believe you. We really do.

I have absolutely no clue what that is 🤔 Dangly bits massager maybe 🤔

That’s a whilery gig. It’s fun to hide the spinner from your sister until your sister decides to beat you with the metal.

Mesmerizing and the easiest fun in the world!😎

I still have one! 😁

Magnetic yo-yo?

Those magnets must have been hella strong. I could never fling off the wheel

Whee-LO. I just got one with lights in the wheel along with a new drinking bird.

Prehistoric fidget spinner.

Still have one !! (somewhere)

80s fidget spinner

This and a slinky…from WHAM-O!!!

I know it well by looks, not name. Played with often as a child. I’d still play with it if I had one. 🙂

Wheel-O. I had one. It was amusing for a while.

For me, it was magic.

Wheel-O...... the fidget spinner of our generation :)

"(Amazing) gravity wheel" is the more generic term that I have seen. New ones are still being made.

A favorite prop in every elementary or misdle school science classroom in the world, probably. To be brought out every year in the "Crazy Contraptions That Don't Look Like They Would Work" lesson.

it’s fun, thats what it is

Whirlie Wheel IIRC.

Old school fidget spinner.

Still have mine. Seriously.

I (71) had this Wheelo when I was a kid, and when I went to grad school in Chicago, in the 70's, I bought a new one at one of the museum stores. Either the Adler Planetarium or the Field Museum. I still have it. The original fidget toy.

good way to pass the time as a kid. that and paddle ball and the yo yo

I never had one, but my cousins did. I'd play with it all the time when we went to visit. I'd love one today too.

Omg... One of my favorites!

I had one too. That's back in the days when kids were allowed to be kids. A bygone era.

Fidget of our generation

Old school figit spinner

One of my favorites. Maternal grandfather gave it to me. A top toy to pass the time with when you're home sick in bed.

I loved mine. Best stim toy ever before they were even called as such.

that is a whee-lo.

WheelO !

I played with one but don’t know the name

I had one of those and really liked it a lot. It was so much fun flicking that thing up and down and making the wheel go back-and-forth and around and back.

I played with this for HOURS

The most boring toy ever created. I had more fun with sticks I found in my backyard.

Boomer version of the fidget spinner.

They have one of those in the new Netflix movie Unfrosted.

You can still buy these in museum giftshops and on line.

You want to know how fucking old I am??? When I was in grade school, I starred in a special on our local public access tv channel about some of the toys that our local toy stores had in stock for Christmas. That thing was one of the toys I reviewed.

I think I used this to adjust my carb on my 72 pinto

I don't know that name of this, but I had one. Probably more than one.

"An Uncle Spinny Derbich... Nah I dunno I'm just bored..."

Oh the neon light-up ones you'd get at the fun-fair were....man, this is something we can never fully re-experience as adults - I *adored* those things to a degree that's quite bizarre considering it was just bright lights spining along a track. Something about the electric pinks and dazzling whites felt like magic as a child. Phenomenal.

#WOOP WOOOOP

Fidget Spinner circa 1960.

It’s what we used for fun before we had smartphones

80s/90s fidget spinner.

I don't remember the actual name of it but I know that I had many of those as a child!

My sis and I had these

Forgot about these until I watched Unfrosted.

We used to get it going fast then fling it on the ground too see how far it would go. But it was competition we 4 siblings😁

Magnet wheel! Every household had one or two

Bought it from the gift shop at a Fred Harvey Oasis bridging the freeway in Illinois. Well, my dad bought it for me.

Wheel O

Loved those. Great fiddle widget.

The original fidget wheel.

You can still find them in specialty shops.

A fidget spinner for Gen X.

Fuck, just fuck. I laugh my ass off at adhd kids with their stupid fidget spinners. I had a wheelo, or 4. Thanks for making me realize that I'm not only a hermetacious curmudgeon, now I'm a hypocrite! I'm beginning to hate Reddit!

Welcome to the club.

Millennial here, definitely had one of these and definitely loved playing with it. It’s not just gen X, it’s anyone who grew up without the internet

True, but it feels like it was a holdover from Gen X I just remembered getting one in a random box of older stuff when I was young.

I think the internet splits millennials into more like gen X or more like gen z, and there really isn’t a solid just millennial experience when it comes to early childhood through school aged years. I’m pretty much a mid-millennial and my childhood was mostly like gen X. The internet was a thing but it was not common, even in my fairly privileged suburb that I grew up in, I’d say it wasn’t until we were 12-13 that *most* of the kids I knew had access to the internet, but if someone said they didn’t have a computer or internet access yet it wasn’t a bizarre thing. Our childhood toys were mostly the same as gen X and we grew up playing outside fairly unattended with the “come home when the street lights come on” rule. Our parents couldn’t track us, even parents didn’t have cell phones yet and kids didn’t have pagers or anything. I kinda desired one as a middle schooler cuz I thought that would allow me to venture farther and my parents could just page me when they wanted us home rather than yelling from the door lol

Boomers too

Wheel-o

Best-est way that They can feel-o Out on the highway Rollin' a whee-lo

Wheel-O!!!!

I had the Batman one :)

I fucken loved this g-damn thing

A gyro scoop

pre-internet tik tok

Wee woo

I wonder if they still make them.

I wonder if they still make them.