Color, refraction, light, Isaac Newton (in all his glory), rainbows and a kaleidoscope. It’s a one-stop optics lab and just plain cool. Plus it’s a door of introduction to history, engineering and even mineralogy.
— This quality acrylic prism works for fun and exploration. Kids learn how to split a beam of light into a multicolored rainbow or look through the top beveled edge to reflect images into kaleidoscopic patterns.
— “Prisms are perennial sellers, always fascinating, always interesting, always a must-have once a child begins to look through them. No matter what the season, prisms are always an item,” said Martin Fong, owner of Dis & Dats toy store in San Francisco.
— Kyle Davies of Brainee Bunch in College Park, Md., said the smaller ones are selling particularly well for them.
— “You could look at a simple toy prism and say ‘whatever’ or you could look at it and remember that people like Einstein, Boyle, Newton and hundreds of other great minds used to play with them when they were kids, too,” Sue Ellen Childs of Tedco told TDmonthly.