Tag - Toy Fair

February 17, 2011

Mentos Geyser Car Makes Splash at Toy Fair

We are showing our new Mentos® Geyser Rocket Car at the New York Toy Fair this week. Strap the car to a bottle of soda, like Diet Coke, drop in some Mentos® and let it take off. It goes fast and can reach speeds of up to 35 miles per hour and travel about 150 feet, so make sure you watch for speed traps if out in the neighborhood. The Rocket Car will be available to purchase this summer.

Science teachers have been doing the soda and mint experiment for years and years, but the original method used Wintergreen Lifesavers. When the manufacturer of the candies changed the diameter making them larger than the opening of the 2-liter bottle, teachers went looking for a substitute. MENTOS® candy did the trick, and proved to be the perfect candy to mix with the carbonated soda. For more information on the Mentos/soda reaction, read our experiment and watch the video that started the craze back in 2005.

December 30, 2009

Best of Spangler Science 2009

It’s been quite a year for us at Steve Spangler Science… in fact, when the year starts out with 50 off your closest friends helping you wish Ellen DeGeneres a Happy Birthday, you know big things are in store.  Whether we were letting fans ride on the infamous Bed of Nails at NAEYC 2009 or launching trash cans with a police force audience, we can guarantee that 2009 was never boring.  We’ve compiled some of our favorite highlights from the year, so feel free to browse through them and go back with us as we reminisce about our favorite moments from 2009… can you imagine what 2010 has in store?

ellen-birthday-12-30-09Happy Birthday Ellen!

Our 2009 Boot Camp tour kicks off in Oklahoma City, with a great group of teachers.

Our team stormed Toy Fair and set off a few geysers in the process.

Steve Spangler Science Jelly Marbles were featured on the prime-time hit series Numb3rs.

I debuted what would become one of our most requested experiments… Laminar Flow.

The face of our Insta-Snow product, Arianne Heaton, headed to college, years after she was my student at Willow Creek Elementary.

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February 13, 2007

A Visit from the Toy Guy – Chris Byrne

spanglertoyguysmall.jpgOne of the highlights of Toy Fair every year is meeting up with our good friend, Chris Byrne, the Toy Guy. Over the past 25 years, Chris has spent some part of every day playing with new toys-not a bad job, if you stop to think about it. He’s the guy the insiders turn to find out what’s hot and what’s not in the toy industry. When Chris is in Denver, we invite him to share his latest toy finds with our viewers at KUSA-TV (NBC). During Toy Fair each year, we pull Chris away from the trade show floor and send a live feed back to Denver. Right before we went on-air, Chris turned to his production assistant and wanted her to find him a bottle of Diet Coke so he could launch a Mentos Geyser during the segment. I only had ten seconds to convince him that the mess wouldn’t be worth the wow-factor (and no one had a change of clothes).

toyguy_logo.jpgChris stopped by the Be Amazing! booth to check out the flying soda.

February 13, 2007

Toy Fair 2007: It’s Cool to Like Science

The opening day at Toy Fair was amazingly busy for those companies who had cool science product, according to a staff writer from CNET News.com. Caroline McCarthy writes, “Amid the madness of the 2007 American International Toy Fair here, a somewhat unexpected trend was visible: apparently, science rules.” Caroline stopped by the booth yesterday to ask a few questions about our new Geyser Tube toy and, more importantly about general trends in science education. She points out some very interesting observations in her article – teachers should read this.

Despite the perpetual debate over whether the United States is losing ground in raising the world’s best scientists, today’s pop-culture climate is remarkably conducive to making science trendy. The ubiquity of science kits and gadgets at the Toy Fair made me wonder–is science actually cool now?

Even YouTube has its influence. Be Amazing, a toy company that specializes in chemistry sets and licensed products from Steve Spangler Science, was drawing massive crowds with

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February 12, 2007

A First Look at the Geyser Tube

mentosgeyserpackage.jpgOur new Geyser Tube toy made it’s first public appearance at the Toy Fair in New York this morning. If you’ve ever tried to do the Mentos Geyser experiment, you know that it’s tough to a handful of Mentos candies into the bottle of soda before it starts to erupt. The Geyser Tube is a trigger device that holds a stack of Mentos candies directly above the opening of the bottle. Just pull the pin and the Mentos instantly drop into the soda and the soda geyser shoots up through the nozzle at the top of the tube.

Over the past year, we’ve come up with many ways The Geyser Tube attaches to the top of any 2-liter bottle and holdsof sodatrigger device that suspends a stack of Mentos candy above the open bottle of soda. When you pull the pin, the Mentos drop and the erupting soda is funneled updevice that holds

Steve Spangler, a science editor for a Colorado TV station and a toy maker on the side, this week demonstrated his “Geyser Tube” at the Continue Reading…