The robopube motherball.
Out of all the strangeness borne of the Atari cartridge wallet adventure, the robopube motherball stands out. I’d like to say I named it, but in its presence the name cannot be denied. As the first batch of ~1200 games began the wallet repurposing process, the springs began to snag each other as I threw more into the box. After a couple hundred of springs were added to the box, the snagged mess formed itself into a round shape. By the time the entire lot was processed all of the springs had taken on a new existence.
The spring starts in a V shape with the tension loop at the bottom and both points are barbed half-circles. Multiply this by a thousand and you have a melon-sized ball of antique tetanus-bearing metal, ready to sink a jabby tip into flesh with every touch. Oh, sure, we had a hoot with it at first, but then the ugly truth became clear: one by one, each spring must be removed to be fashioned into the wallet money clips. As easily as the motherball is ready to jab it is twice as unlikely to let a piece of itself go.
Before I began the painful experience of separating the springs from the motherball, I realized if the wallets succeed and I need to process more, I’ll never have a batch as large as the one I had at that moment. The photos from that lone moment of motherball appreciation adorn the background of this website as well as my twitter profile picture.