No strings attached?

August 7, 2006 7:02 AM

For a friend: While on holiday in Japan several years ago, we saw this street vendor with his dancing, jumping puppet. Hows it work? Download Video (mp4)

I'm guessing a very fine or well hidden string. But my friend assures me there was none. What other possible explanations can there be?

posted by lemonfridge to Technology (4 answers total)

I can't see the video at the office, but can it be related to this question?
posted by swordfishtrombones at 7:09 AM on August 7, 2006

It's a string, you can see it in the video.
posted by onalark at 7:45 AM on August 7, 2006

It's obviously a string with somebody off camera controlling it.
posted by wsg at 11:05 AM on August 7, 2006

The best answer to that prior question is not right, afaik -- I saw these in italy, france, etc as well and wanted to build some myself for an art project. I too originally *thought* that there was a piece of twine connected to a solid object and then attached to the boombox attenna at the other side, which would then bounce because of the reverberations through the antenna -- this is apparently incorrect. After doing quite a bit of research, I found the typical way the scam works is this:

there's two guys -- one who's selling the stuff and standing by the boombox, occaisionally putting new "dancing" dolls down. The other guy is standing somewhere nearby, and is tapping his hand or foot to the music -- the thread/twine is attached to this guy, and his movements make the figures bob up and down. One end *may* be attached to the boombox, but that has nothing to do with making the figures bounce.
posted by fishfucker at 12:15 PM on August 7, 2006