Bluetooth Jack

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.