Behold my mighty tube tester! Someday when I have a house, this may very well be the centerpiece of the room – (or perhaps “fortress” is a better word) – I plan on devoting to all the crap I’ve amassed at thrift stores, and the like. To give you a sense of scale, it stands about 3 feet high.

So what is it? Well, back in days of yore, when a TV stopped working, you could take the tubes out of the TV, bring them to a hardware store with a tester like this, plug them in, and see if any of them where blown. If a faulty tube was the culprit, you’d replace it there, and come home to get your TV humming again.

What you might not be able to tell in this picture is that the stepford wife in the pick is one of those jobbies where when you walk past it animates. (Like a large version of those prizes you’d get in your Cracker Jacks.)