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.