Spiromatic

This was a spin off by the Spirograph company which involved a plain white card, about 4 inches by 6 inches, set on a revolving base in the centre of a drip tray made out of red plastic, which was battery operated and used the large old fashioned D torch batteries. The idea was that you dripped or squirted a small amount of paint from one or more plastic containers to produce your "masterpiece" as the card spun around. There were four colours, red, yellow, blue and white - sometimes it worked well and you actually made quite a nice pattern but other times it was just a mess. It came in a really large box (I still have one) and was brought out in the sixties or early seventies and I seem to remember that we bought it in Murrays department store in High Wycombe, Bucks, England. You couldn't really play a game on it with friends, but it was reasonably entertaining if you were stuck inside on a rainy day on your own. The problem was that the paints ran out really quickly and when the batteries were wearing out (and they were very expensive to keep replacing) the patterns were just one big blob. Of course you needed to buy more cards too!