Small wonders

Is that a fan in your pocket, or are you just cool?

by Ethan Jacobs

It's amazing what a little imagination coupled with a healthy profit motive can accomplish. Take the portable battery-powered fan. By rights the portable fan should be a trifle, a harmless little convenience that you grab on a whim while you're buying something that's really useful in hot weather, like deodorant. But the fan makers of America, perhaps bored out of their skulls with manufacturing the same old fans, have developed a demented creativity. And portable fans have gotten a whole lot stranger.

One maker, apparently with a fetish for Windex bottles, devised the spray-bottle fan, which seems to have caught on tremendously. The blades are mounted on the end of a nozzle that sprays a fine mist; fill the attached bottle with ice water, give it a squirt, and the chill of the water and the fan's gentle breeze will work their way into your skin on a hot summer day. You can buy one variety, the cleverly named Mister Fan, for $9.99 at your local CVS. It's a bizarre-looking contraption, to be sure, but ingenious.

Most other innovations in the portable-fan industry are far less functional, but they take the concept of kitsch to a higher plane. Newbury Comics stocks a cute little chrome-colored model that looks like a miniature version of the standard oscillating desk fan ($5.99). Fruity Coolers (CVS, $9.99) are shaped like pieces of fruit (orange, lemon, or watermelon); they have fruit-slice-shaped rotor blades and built-in fruit-scented air freshener. And perhaps the greatest testament to the fractured mental state of the fan industry is the Sumofan, which is, well, a fan shaped like a sumo wrestler holding a fan (Newbury Comics, $8.99). Of course, for those of you who don't appreciate the awkward stares from passers-by, there's the pocket-sized Cool Flash, with a translucent blue body and soft foam blades (Bed Bath & Beyond, $4.99). Whatever your preference, you no longer have an excuse for looking hot and bothered this summer.