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Faucet off, with no water flowing.

Faucet on, with water flowing from the tap.

Do you see the picture above? Good, now, turning on the big knob gets the water flowing. Wonderful. This is great for taking a bath. But how do I get the water flowing to the top?

Now, while I’m not a blindingly insightful and brilliant genius, I’m not particularly dumb either, I think. But honest to God, I was baffled. How the hell do I stop the water flowing out of the tap and make it flow out of the shower. How on Earth do I take a goddamn shower?

So, on my very first day, I took a bath. Oh, it was far from unpleasant, but can you imagine waking up every morning and waiting for your tub to fill so that you can take a bath? Do you even have any idea how girly that sounds?!

*shudder*

Finally, I gave up. One of my friends had come home and we got talking — and I told her about my troubles with the shower. Her first reaction, of course, was to burst out laughing, much to my dismay. Of course, when she saw the faucet, she was baffled too.

And in the end, we figured it out. Mind you — this took two people, with at least 4 (on the way to 5) degrees between us to figure out. Bad usability!

So, how do we turn the shower on? Oh, it’s very simple, really.

Faucet in default position only turns the tap on.

Once the tap is turned on, pulling this will turn on the shower.

Faucet in the first position will just run the tap. And once the tap is running, pulling down a tiny little thing at the mouth will shut off supply to the tap and turn on the shower instead.

Of course, nobody reads the manual, and I had completely missed a note that was very kindly placed on my table by the house maintenance folks that explained how to turn on the shower. Complete with a diagram, explaining the operation in detail. The only thing missing, of course, was a note of apology for having used such a retarded piece of equipment.

Very usable. The idiot who designed this probably won an award, even.

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At the outset, it seems simple enough — a simple mounted helicopter with a set of levers and a rotor controlled by a motor. However, this simple toy can be a lot more entertaining than you’d think.

Simple but fun toy chopper.

As for the controls, you have two — one for pitch and the other for throttle. Basically, the pitch control changes the angle of the blades, and consequently changes the direction of flight. Push it up and it goes forward, pull it down and it goes back. The throttle, on the other hand, controls the amount of power that goes to the chopper rotor. Pulling it down gives it more power and pushing it up gives it less power. Pulling the throttle all the way down also causes a rise in altitude of the chopper.

Intuitive controls.

Flying with minimal throttle and very little pitch.

Chopper rising.

Of course, sometimes, the simple things are the most fun. This toy is an excellent example — your first thought would be, okay, so it can do all this. What next? Well, the thing is, these two simple controls can be used in infinite combinations to do the weirdest of things.

For instance, quickly alternating the pitch causes the chopper to jump.

Jumpy chopper.

And doing the same for the throttle while keeping a constant pitch can cause it to act wavy.

Chopper on a wavy trajectory.

There are also two tiny “cargoes” that you can try lifting with the chopper — coupled with what this thing can already do, adding weight makes it more “acrobatic”, so to speak. And do not make the mistake of keeping it on your desk, because you will be tempted to lift every other thing with the chopper.

At the end of the day, a lot of good fun and a great toy! These things are made by Jasman Toys, and more details about them can be found at the Command Force Toys website.

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