Volcano Lamp

Stephanie's Aunt gave this lamp to us last weekend. It's about 12 inches high, but half that is a silver base. About 6-7 inches wide. It has a little island setting and when you turn it on, it shoots these red balls in the air that come rolling down the side of the volcano. Hard to describe, so I made a video of it. I think they are available at Walgreen's.

http://www.thehukilau.com/TCimages/volcano2.wmv

Prompted by your post I picked one up today, and yes, at Walgreens. About $20 might be a bit steep, but then maybe that's just me, as most of my "tiki finds" are 50c LPs from the Salvation Army. But I do like it -- it grows on you. And when not in use, it still looks good, like a little 3-D painting or whatever. Not like those rotating faux-aquariums with fish going around in circles -- when off, they're nothing to look at.

Tropicalguy,
I was thinking of trying to make it into a sort of window scene. It has that 3D thing and if you sort of hide the base and make it a little obscure, I think it could be awesome. A little something you may not notice at the bar at first.

My thoughts exactly. Obscure the very un-tiki metallic-looking parts with reed, matting, whatever, and it's like a window onto a little diorama - like fantasy world. That in and of itself is a world for the contemplative tiki drink connoisseur to enter into and linger a while. Then, at a certain special time, the switch is turned on, the world lights up, and the volcano blows! The party is thus truly underway; the powers have been unleashed.

Swanky, that link takes me to some blank page with an aol heading.

Those things are popular! I had to go to four Walgreens before I found one that wasn't sold out. And then I had to elbow a woman out of the way and take the display lamp!

Pablus, it's like a little aquarium filled with water. There's a volcano surrounded by palm trees and the background is a pic of a beach with palm trees and tsunami level surf crashing. A water pump shoots a bunch of tiny red balls out of the mouth of the volcano and they fly up in the air (er, water) and then cascade down the sides of the volcano into the bottom to start the cycle again. Cool little lamp.

It needs a grass skirt and a little thatch roof cover. Thanks for the lead Swanky.

link doesn't work for me either. Just a page of gibberish data.

It's a Windows video. Might work better iif you right click the link and save the target and then play the download file.

Here are some pics:

I wish there was another image hosting site we could use that doesn't shrink the pics.

Here's a tapa type skirt I jerry rigged (sorry Sven!) until I can do something more permanent:

I'm going to try and make a little thatched roof for the top as well.

How cute, it's wearing a dress!

How about doing a Kona Kai style diorama, a fake window view, with miniature stick shutters on the edges...

Isn't it kind of noisy in the privacy of one's Tiki bar? I always liked those fake flames made out of cloth, until I heard the fan motor at home.

On 2005-03-17 16:54, bigbrotiki wrote:
Isn't it kind of noisy in the privacy of one's Tiki bar? I always liked those fake flames made out of cloth, until I heard the fan motor at home.

Nah, sounds like an aquarium. Lessen you think aquariums are noisy...

I must have one of these! Can the pic in the back be switched out? Things like that almost always are because of the way they are assembled.

I want one. I'm going to check Walgreen's this weekend. No word of it on the site. I checked one Walgreen's already and they looked at me like I was crazy. I'll be checking 2 more on saturday.

I don't see how the pic in the back can be removed, at least not without fiddling with it more than I'm willing to (visions of breaking it and really, really ruining my day). It's not like those rotating things with translucent pic you can easily remove.

I looked for quite a while at Walgreens and was just about to give up when I saw the boxes up, above eye level. I don't even think they were really displayed per se. Your store(s) might have it after all. The fact that the staff didn't know doesn't prove much nowadays.

Yes, it is a bit more noisy than I'd've expected, truth be told. I think I'll rarely have it on for any real length of time. Maybe just for the duration of a volcano-related song, played loud, with the lights down! (Hmm, volcano-related song ... Don't worry, I'm not going to mention Jimmy Buffett here.) (Woops, just did!)

I picked one up on the way home and sadly, the pic can't be changed without removing the entire top section that's full of water. Changing the bg pic and painting or covering the silver base could make this as cool as a tacky Mexican trinket. Oh, well, it's only $20, so maybe some surgery is in order.

Wow!

I just went out during my lunch break and managed to find one of these lamps. It is spewing away as I type this, lol. For $20, I don't think you could find a more ridiculously goofy tiki-ish lamp anywhere.

BTW, for TC'ers in Tampa/St. Pete, the Walgreens on 9th (MLK) and 54th has 7 left. They are in an end cap with a bunch of really cheesy stuff!

If anyone wants one that can not find one, let me know...

Jason Wathey
Tampa, Florida

http://www.wathey.com

[ Edited by: Jawa on 2005-03-18 09:37 ]

We have them in the Walgreens up here in Tallahassee, too.

The pump makes a constant low volume rattle. I must say that the motion is most impressive! Since this is a volcano, is this a lava lamp (or maybe a magma lamp)?

It's got a light in it that gives is a diffuse volcanic red glow. (I wonder how hard it would be to hack to give it a night/sunrise/day/sunset effect).

Are there any theater prop wizards out there who could tell us whether this effect could be scaled up? Or would this be picky about hitting the sweet spot with fluid density & velocity & particle weight?

[ Edited by: Philot on 2005-03-18 19:47 ]

Just got mine. My kids wont leave it alone!

Maybe someone could put up a webpage that just has a close up live cam on this 24/7?

[ Edited by: finkdaddy on 2005-03-18 19:49 ]

I bought mine at Spencer's Gifts about 2 years ago. I loved it until it started leaking, then i had to throw it away. Hope mine is the only one to do this.

:lol:

I'm just imagining a link to the volcano lamp webcam amongst the real volcanos on sites like this...

http://www.volcanolive.com/volcanocams.html

...that would be great but, these volcano fans take their lava-gazing a little too seriously to post a goofy link like that on their site. I think they'd be afraid it would hurt their credability.

The instructions say there is a magnet in it. I have no idea how it works if it run by a magnet.

The noise is a bit annoying, that's why I need to get my bar open. In a big bar, you wouldn't hear it. Just another little thing behind the bar to catch your eye.

My financee got one of these for Christmas. It's cool, but the sound is annoying. I love to play with it but my dog is terrified of the noise and runs for cover :wink:

On 2005-03-21 05:35, Pomaika i wrote:
My financee got one of these for Christmas. It's cool, but the sound is annoying. I love to play with it but my dog is terrified of the noise and runs for cover :wink:

Do you all have a little red nubbin up front? I only ask because I keep reading about how noisy everyone's volcanos are but mine doesn't seem that noisy to me.

When I first got my volcano, I brought it home and fired it up and it was awfully noisy. It vibrated quite a bit. I noticed that there was a big gaping hole in the front that didn't "look quite right." I consulted the volcano box and in the pics the volcano appeared to have a little red nubbin where my volcano had a gaping hole! So...I opened her up from the backside and with a screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers I located the nubbin an fixed it securely in the hole. Putting the nubbin in the hole reduced the noise significantly. Honestly, I feel that it's now no louder than your average fish tank and now the volcano spews with wild abandon without being even slightly annoying.

Is your nubbin in the hole, or is your hole nubbin-filled? It may make a difference.

Innuendo aside, the above is all factual and true.

My hole is filled with nubbin. Boy, I never thought I would have to say that. :) I've had fishtanks for years and they're way noisier than this. I like mine.

I saw this item is now 50% off at our Walgreens. There were still as many there as when I bought mine (full price, of course), so it doesn't seem like there's one left and they're pushing it out the door. Which could mean many or all Walgreens are having this sale. I paid $20, now it's on sale for $10. So let's see, every additional one I buy brings my average cost down a little more, hmm...