TARDIS Collector’s Corner: TARDIS Rotating LED Cell Phone Charm (The Shotglass TARDIS series)

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

The very smallest of the shotglass TARDISes in my collection is the TARDIS Rotating LED Cell Phone Charm.  It’s a tiny tiny TARDIS encased in a plastic bell jar dome that screws onto a plastic base bearing the Doctor Who logo used during the David Tennant era of the show.  While mine hangs in my car from my rear view mirror, the device is meant to attach to a cell phone.  The base has sensors within it that can detect incoming cell signals which activate the device to cause the TARDIS within the dome to spin and LED lights in the base to flash, signaling you that you have texts or calls when your phone is on silent mode.  Sounds mildly handy, no?  Turns out, not so much–at least in the way that I used the device.

The first time my TARDIS charm ever activated was at night, as I was driving home.  There I was, driving down the straightish stretch of highway near my house, preparing to turn onto the lane that leads to my neighborhood, when unexpectedly I am blasted at eye level by flashing blue lights seemingly from somewhere on the road ahead.  In that instant my brain became convinced that, at worst, I was about to be t-boned by a police cruiser coming out of the neighborhood to my right; or, at best, said police cruiser was not in motion but had turned on the blues in order to pull me over for some unknown infraction.  It was startling and I screamed aloud, much like a little girl. Then I heard my cell buzzing and realized what was going on and felt the kind of shame one only feels when startled by tiny sparkly lights. And this happened on more than one occasion as the days went by.  I also learned that the effect wasn’t that much less startling during daylight hours.

Fortunately, the batteries in this device didn’t last very long, no doubt owing to it having sat in on a shelf and/or in a warehouse for years before I purchased it.  I have yet to replace them, nor are their any plans in place to do so.

As far as TARDISes go, I cut this one a lot of slack on the detail side because it’s so tiny.  It also gets extra points for looking cool under the dome.  It’s almost like the Master was able to somehow use his Tissue Compression Eliminator on it to finally trap it in some sort of time-travel-proof bell jar.  It’s a novelty item with a lot of novelty.  I’ll give it four Tardi.