To Mitt: Here’s Your Digital Etch A Sketch
A remark made by one of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s advisers has sent online shoppers — and investors — into an Etch A Sketch frenzy.
In case you’ve missed the sandstorm, Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, said on Wednesday that if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the campaign will “hit a reset button” to take on President Obama in the fall.
Fehrnstrom then added, “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
While Romney’s rivals have pounced on the comment — Newt Gingrich’s camp has even created a SketchyRomney app — Etch A Sketch fans have pounced on the venerable toy, buying it in droves on Amazon.com.
Politico reports that sales of the 1950’s relic shot up more than 2,000 percent on the e-commerce site, while Ohio Art Company, the maker of Etch A Sketch, saw its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday, before closing at $9.65, more than double its Wednesday closing price of $4.
Here at AllThingsD, we say: Why go for the plastic version, when you can play with a digital Etch A Sketch on your mobile appendages?
That’s right: Campaign platforms, errant Twitpics, awkward remarks — all erased with the shake of an iPad.
It’s a politician’s best friend.
For iPhone, there’s Etch A Sketch Premium, from Freeze Tag, Inc., a company that makes casual games for mobile devices and personal computers. It costs just 99 cents (or about 0.000001309367724577594 percent of the $75,609,012 Romney has raised to date).
Unlike the physical Etch A Sketch, users of this app can change the color of the toy’s frame, choose from a color palette when drawing, use predrawn shapes or a background (like Hangman), and share their drawings with friends via email, Facebook or a photo album. As with the original Etch A Sketch, you simply shake it to erase it.
But a smartphone screen is just too small for this kind of app, and the knobs of the Etch A Sketch appear to be cut off at the bottom. You can use your finger to draw, but that seems like Etch A Sketch sacrilege.
Fortunately, there’s an iPad app from the same company. This one costs $2.99, and is the real deal.
The Draw Something addicts out there can share their Etch A Sketch iPad drawings with friends over Wi-Fi. Or, users can draw alone, add photos from a photo album, use colorful stamps, share through Facebook and even access an iPod song library to set sketches to a soundtrack … like, maybe a campaign soundtrack?
For Android devices, there’s a free version of Freeze Tag’s Etch A Sketch with ads; and a 99-cent version without. There’s also the 99-cent Etch-a-Doodle app, which replicates the Etch A Sketch experience.
Those who would rather pay a more visible homage to Etch a Sketch can check out these retro red covers for mobile devices.
And if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can attempt to make a Kinect-a-Sketch, as these guys did, as seen in the video below:
(Photo courtesy of Flickr/The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis)