I remember being in my last year of primary school, anticipating the summer holidays in only 3 weeks' time, when the craze first started. They seemed innocuous at first: just three-pronged pieces of plastic, but as the weeks sped by, they colonised more and more playgrounds, conquered more and more classrooms. What am I talking about? Fidget spinners.

I remember being slightly interested at first, as an increasing number of my classmates showed off their new toys, but my mild curiosity never got me invested enough to convince my parents to buy me one. It turned out that I didn’t even need to ask, because once they started spreading like wildfire my younger brother did the job for me.

I remember the look of abject shock, horror, and utter disappointment on my father’s face when, after what felt like years of my brother’s tearful begging and pleading, he googled ‘Fidget spinner’ and was faced with the disheartening reality that his youngest child was stupid. Who would want to spend £9.99 on a cheap piece of rotating plastic? Apparently, every single pre-teen in the world because by 2017 it was a miracle if you came across a child who didn’t have one.

I remember going onto YouTube and scrolling through thousands of clickbait titles - in all capitals with an asterisk on each side: *KID SPENDS $1000 ON HIS BROTHER’S CREDIT CARD TO BUY FIDGET SPINNERS **PRANK** (BACKFIRES!)* Not the catchiest title, I’ll admit, but this was a real video on YouTube that somehow got over 10 million views! How on Earth did this clip, which after watching it looks like it was produced by a ten-year-old, become so popular? Simple – it included ‘fidget spinner’ in the title. These exorbitant pieces of plastic were just a funny fad, a passing phase, a mindless mania – but while they were still sought-after finding one left over in a shop felt like finding gold. To children, they were priceless.

Now, fidget spinners are worthless: being caught red-handed with one will only result in instant social exile – or so I thought. It was only after an offhand comment from my younger brother that I began to question this, and after some further interrogation a golden nugget of information was revealed. “Everyone in year 8 has a fidget spinner – there are new ones that make a special noise when you spin them”. It seemed that Fidget Spinner Inc. had finally harnessed the power of “cool jingling” to appeal to their younger audience, and it was very effective indeed – effective enough for them to make a potential comeback. So, fidget spinners: fleeting fad, or returning rage?