Popular Mechanics

February 12, 1999

Imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from my favorite magazine, "Popular Mechanics for Blondes". They had somehow gotten word about my new waterwheel rewinder and wanted to do an article. Even more surprising was finding I became a Cover Girl on the same issue. Here's reprints of the article and the cover.

Claims ahead of her time invention could revolutionize the world of tomorrow.

The lack of a distracting flashing number twelve makes it easy for us blondes to use, she says. Its amazing, it rewinds tapes just by letting water fall on one side of the wheel. The only problems seem to be the long time it takes to rewind the tape and to keep splashing water off the tape. I tried to double its speed by letting water fall on both sides of the waterwheel. But so far, I have lacked success in decreasing the rewind time. I feel confident that the answer to doubling its speed will be found someday, says inventor, Barbie Lanai. Maybe some really smart brunette will be able to improve the design, but you know how they are. None of my brunette friends can even get their VCR’s to flash that pretty number 12. I hope someday to get down to a size ten, but for now it reminds me what dress size to buy. For the time being, I just rent the tapes for a couple extra days. I think the money I’ll save on rewinding fees will pay for the extra rent. In fact, my patent attorney, tells me video rental stores might even buy the rights to this invention, "just to keep it off the market".

She was also confident that an optional umbrella could be attached to the waterwheel and would cure the splashing water problem.

Barbie would not reveal the inner mysteries of the device, but did say the rewinder is constructed of 127 pieces of redwood in 27 different shapes in a secret process guaranteeing that no two pieces of wood come out alike. "The hardest part was trying to get the 6 foot long 1"x6" boards through the 3 foot wide door in the basement workshop. Regardless which way I rotated the board, it was still wider than the door. But perseverance paid off, by cutting the boards to under 3 feet long, I was able to get the wood into the shop". Barbie says a wider door will solve the manufacturing problem in the future.

Expect full page, four color ads for this useful machine to appear soon in this magazine. Pricing has not yet been disclosed, but exclusive blonde dealerships are still available. PM4b