Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar Win Boosts Sales Of Inception-style Spinning Tops
It’s not perhaps the obvious knock-on effect of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar win for his role in ‘The Revenant’, but a welcome one nonetheless.
It appears that the actor’s accolade has drawn fans to all kinds of DiCaprio-based ephemera, including the spinning tops he uses as a 'totem’ in the Christopher Nolan movie 'Inception’.
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Burton-On-Trent-based designer Will Cutler has seen an unprecedented surge in orders for his Vorso MK1 top, according to The Independent.
“I’m serious man,” the 26-year-old designer told the newspaper. “I’m worried we won’t have enough stock.”
The tops, which were assisted to the market place by a Kickstarter campaign last year, aren’t particularly cheap, at £32 each (there are also models at £60 and £75), but as they’re made from high-grade materials, and fashioned on top-end machinery, they can spin for in excess of 10 minutes.
“The tops look like toys that should cost very little money,” he adds.
“But they require extremely high levels of engineering and are made on machines that cost £350,000.
“Essentially, they’re pointless, but when you spin it and it gets to the point when it appears motionless it’s… mesmerising.”
In the mind-bending 'Inception’, DiCaprio’s character Dominic Cobb, who leads a team who infiltrate people’s dreams in order to perform corporate espionage, carries his totem in order to be able to distinguish between the dream world and the real world.
If he’s in the real world, his top will falter, but in the dream world, it will spin forever.
The reality is not quite the same, but highly-engineered tops, which sometimes boast gem stone or ceramic tips, can cost upwards of £500 and can spin for nearly 20 minutes.
Cutler reports that his Vorso MK1 top’s record stands at a spin of 15 minutes and 38 seconds.
Image credits: Warner Bros
