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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Delightful Relic of Scandalously Poor Design., January 10, 2008
Durability:2.0 out of 5 stars Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars
The familiar, smiling feline resembling Felix the cat is a pop-culture classic. Created by the California Clock Company (now in Portland, Oregon) in 1932, the Kit Cat Clock sports a unique art-deco style, delightful smile, and big kitty eyes, whose cuteness continues to make sales. The company claims to sell an average of one kitty every three minutes. That works out to about 175,000 kitties per year. That would make for about 13 million kitties total, if the statistic holds for the entire 3/4-century lifetime of the product.
If this is true, it is an utterly astonishing result, because the quality of this clock is abysmal.
To be fair, the clock does keep good time. But wall clocks that keep good time are available on Amazon for $3.99 -- you want the Kit Cat clock because it's so darn charming! Unfortunately, the charming tail and eye mechanism that this clock boasts just doesn't work. The failure isn't due to any particular oversight on the part of the California Clock Co.; it's just a scandalously poor design.
If you manage to get the back cover off the Kit Cat without breaking it (and you'll need to anyway to install two C batteries), watch out for the messy hot-glue job holding the insides together. The kitty's guts consist of a clock casing, a battery casing, and the eye-tail mechanism. The eyes and tail connect (rather precariously) to a thin plastic rod with a magnet on one end. Astoundingly, this magnet is the only design feature that keeps the eyes and tail moving. There is another magnet in the body of the clock, so that if you give the tail a little push, the repulsive force between the magnets makes the mechanism move back and forth for longer than it would otherwise.
However, the tail does not swing once per second, because it is not connected to the clock. As the above description suggests, the eye-tail mechanism is not even connected to the batteries. This means that doesn't swing continuously, but comes to a stop after a little while. Indeed, this design could never have a continuously swinging tail, unless perpetual motion were possible!
As far as anyone knows, perpetual motion is impossible. One can only hope that the perpetual sales of the Kit Cat Clock is impossible too, unless the California Clock Co either improves their design, or lowers the price of the Kit Cat to the earthly realm of the other low-quality clocks on Amazon.
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DVD ~ Hayley Mills
