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Bluetooth Jack

Jack in the Box
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I hated my Jack in the Box when I was a kid. It was cheap and half-broken, and only sproinged about one in three to five rounds of the Mulberry Bush. It wasn't frightening, there was only a sort of banal, disturbing, off-putting anticipation of whether the old crappy clown would show his stupid face. And when he did, it was always with the same sorry spring slap of tin on tin and it startled me every time. Whatever was wrong with the mechanism seemed to produce perfectly random results. God, I hated that fucking thing.

I don't know why anyone would want to reproduce an experience that was neither rewarding nor even pleasant, but I feel somehow compelled. In fact, I would like to perfect that horrible feeling of purposeless anticipation followed by abrupt shock.

The bluetooth jack in the box would incorporate a simple bluetooth trigger and device attached to an overinflated balloon. Edit: (The balloon would be placed somewhere behind the user, ideally, overinflated with helium and floating against the ceiling) When the JITB would normally spring open, the device would trigger a needle that would spring out and pop the balloon. A simple device to augment the surprise, but the journey is in the getting there.

The JITB also has a flywheel that controls the speed of the little tune to make it absolutely as annoying as humanly possible. Fast at first, but then slowing to a crawl toward the end, no matter how fast you turn the handle. The handle would have a cam that slipped on and off the flywheel shaft to give it a herky-jerky unreliable feeling.

When it came to the last phrase of the song, it would slow to duhn dhun dhun

duhn dhun dhun

dhun

dhun …

and then start over without popping out. This would happen three or four times.

When Jack finally pops out, the balloon popper is triggered, so the (severely overinflated) balloon lets go just as the lid flops back with a slap.

Then Jack The Evil Goth Clown rises really slowly from the box.

nomocrow, May 05 2015

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       // I don't know why anyone would want to reproduce an experience that was neither rewarding nor even pleasant //   

       What, like a second marriage ?
8th of 7, May 05 2015
  

       Perhaps you would prefer the theme from "Jaws", and have a great white shark jump out of the box?
Vernon, May 05 2015
  

       [+] I didn't exactly loathe the thing, but I can clearly imagine playing this in a waiting room, and everybody over 40 or so diving for the exit before the final stanza.
FlyingToaster, May 05 2015
  

       I'm failing to see the point of the Bluetooth.
21 Quest, May 06 2015
  

       You and the rest of your planet's population.
8th of 7, May 06 2015
  

       Arrr! It be Bluetooth Jack! The most fearsome pirate ever to communicate over short distances!
hippo, May 07 2015
  

       [hippo] Great minds think alike! My sentiments exactly.
btw- I loved my Jack in the Box! An old timey tin box that lasted forever!
xandram, May 07 2015
  

       But where do I plug in my Bluetooth charger?   

       Somewhere, a quantumly-linked cat dies every time you open one of these things. But that's what it gets for playing with ball-of-string theory.
RayfordSteele, May 07 2015
  

       8th of 7, you are bad.
blissmiss, May 07 2015
  

       The bluetooth is to trigger the baloon-bursting device without the need of a wire, which would spoil the surprise.
nomocrow, May 09 2015
  
      
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