UselessFinds
The Flailing Tube Man, Six Metres Of Him

the blower is not included

Novelty Homeware

The Flailing Tube Man, Six Metres Of Him

The wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man, in five colours and up to six metres tall. The blower is sold separately.

Buy this nonsense$67.00$49.39(sponsored link, opens in a new tab)
  • tube man
  • inflatable dancer
  • air puppet
  • party decor
  • yard display
  • attention

What Is This Thing?

The tube man. The one outside the car dealership, the one with the painted grin and the two long arms that snap upright and collapse and snap upright again, forever, at nothing in particular.

It is sold in three to six metre heights and in blue, pink, purple, green and red. The listing photographs show them lined up in a warehouse, standing in a shopping mall, on a stage under club lighting, and — for no reason anyone has explained — planted in the middle of a rice paddy.

Why You Don't Need It

Start with the thing the listing puts in red capitals on its own image: the blower is not included. You are buying a nylon tube. The part that makes it move is a separate purchase.

Then there is the height. Six metres is taller than a two-storey house. There is no version of owning this that your neighbours do not participate in.

Why You'll Buy It Anyway

Because it is the single most efficient object ever made for the purpose of being noticed, and it achieves that with no lights, no sound and no electronics beyond a fan. The motion is genuinely unpredictable — the arms are not programmed, they are just nylon and moving air — which is exactly why the eye cannot ignore it.

There is also the fact that it has completed the journey from advertising equipment to cultural object. Nobody looks at one and thinks about a car dealership any more. They think about the tube man.

The Flailing Tube Man, Six Metres Of Him — photograph 2
The Flailing Tube Man, Six Metres Of Him — photograph 3

Who It's Actually For

Anyone throwing a party that people have to find. It solves wayfinding and decoration in one object, which is why it turns up at festivals, school fairs and weddings where the reception is down a lane.

Also small businesses, which is what it was built for, and which is the only use here that could be called sensible.

before you click buy

Buy the blower. Check the wattage the listing recommends and get it at the same time, because a tube man without air is a bag of fabric and an anticlimax.

Choose the height against the space honestly. The six-metre version needs clearance, an anchoring point and somewhere out of a prevailing wind, and the three-metre version does the same job in a garden.

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