I needed to go to the grocery store this afternoon, and after I went next door to Five Below to have a look around. Today being Halloween, they had their Christmas sections set up, and as I was on my way out the door, something caught my attention.
The Peanuts Snow Water Speaker. Snoopy in his puffer coat, snow falling around him, and a Bluetooth speaker with light effects.
I need a little joy in my life, and it was only ten dollars, so…
Right off the bat, it didn’t come with instructions.
It comes with the speaker, a bag of little plastic balls you put in the water tank for the snow effect, and a USB-C power cable.
I had a couple of USB-C cords already plugged into outlets or computers, and I found it would work with some and not with others. It seems to work best with the enclosed power cable, maybe because it’s a power cable.
There are four buttons on the back. The one on the far right is the Mode button, which switches it between a Bluetooth mode and a radio mode. The power button seems to require being held in, and when it powers up the speaker you’ll know, because the tank will light up. I am unsure if the power button turns the speaker off; in my experiments it doesn’t seem to, and only cutting power to the speaker has worked.
I filled up the tank with water and added the snow balls. (Without water, the motor inside is very loud, and with water you don’t even hear it.) The balls have a tendency to remain where they land — there was one stuck to Snoopy’s face for a while — and the tank needs frequent shakings and/or stirrings to push the balls back toward the motor at the back that will kick them back up into the “air.”
I had no issues getting this to connect to my computer.
The LED lights inside change color over time.
The speaker sounds fine. I shot some video of the speaker in action, and while it sounds muffled in the video in the room it wasn’t muffled at all.
Of course I was going to use Vince Guaraldi’s music from A Charlie Brown Christmas to test this out. 🙂
All in all, for Peanuts‘ 75th-anniversary, this is a decent piece of kit for ten dollars.