The TARDIS Collector’s Corner: The TARDIS USB hub

(An ongoing writing project in which I catalog and quantify my extensive TARDIS collection.) 

The TARDIS USB hub is one of the more useful TARDi in my collection.  And one of the handiest, as it’s always there on my desk, faithfully being all TARDISy and stuff.

As far as USB hubs go, it does the trick, having four ports, two on each side allowing me to plug up to four USB cabled devices into my computer via the single cable running from the hub to one USB port on the actual desktop unit.  As ya do.  But adding to the rollicking fun of all that, the optional cool bit is that when you plug a USB cable into one of the ports on the TARDIS hub, it not only flashes the roof lamp, but also plays the TARDIS wheezy takeoff noise.  Huzzah.  Or, if you’re somehow sick of hearing the TARDIS wheezy takeoff noise (you deluded monster!) you can flip a switch on the back of it and it shuts up (though it still flashes the light).  For those who are not sick of hearing the TARDIS wheezy takeoff noise, though, another feature allows you to press the door sign on the left, which serves as a button to play the noise and flash the lights.

As far as styling goes, the hub is middle-grade in the detail department.  It checks all the boxes on shape and proportion and signage of your standard Matt Smith-era TARDIS, with a very respectable roof lamp, and painted door hardware, including the keyhole.  However, there is no wood-grain to be found.  This is actually fine by me.  I’d rather there be no wood grain than shitty wood grain.  (Still lookin’ at you, Light Up TARDIS “kit.”)  I give it a solid four TARDI.

A side story to the above picture: a few years back my sister gave me a mug very much like the one pictured beside the TARDIS hub.  It is a mug of the sort that when you pour hot liquids into it the TARDIS on one side vanishes and reappears in outer space on the other side.  Trez cool.  Only trouble is, it comes with a number of notices and stickers warning you to never ever EVER put it in the dishwasher.  And I never ever EVER did.  However, while emptying our dishwasher one day, what should I find but my mug within it, sans any illustrations.  I was sad to have lost all the TARDISy bits of my TARDIS mug, but figured it had been a mistake made by our cleaning lady, who had not been given the memo on the washing of the mug.  Later I mentioned it to the wife, whose eyes shot wide.  I could see within them the guilt reservoir beginning to rise.  Yep, she’d been the culprit the whole time.

We made the original, now blank mug, a new receptacle for pens.  But since my sister was coming for a visit a couple of months later, I decided to get a replacement mug so she wouldn’t feel bad and so I would have a TARDIS mug again.  Then I went and told her the story anyway, cause it was funny.  These days the mug lives on my desk, far away from any dishwasher, and is used as another receptacle for pens, its dematerialization circuits temporarily at rest.

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