Your experience with Lava Lamps, what drew you to them

[Robby Lava Lover]

  Hello all. I was just wondering what drew everyone here initially to lava lamps, and what their experiences with them have been with owning them. I found for myself that I've always liked surreal lighting (as long as it's not intense stroboscopic effects) mixed with ambient/chill/techno music. Someone first planted the idea of lava lamps in my head when they dubbed me "The lava lamp poet" because of the qualities of my metaphysical poetry.

  I've been lucky enough to get 2 lamps for free, and, as someone with anxiety probs, I've found the slow movement, especially of the bigger lamps, really relaxes me...especially with the ambient music :) Also, I enjoy how they have a feeling of being almost alive. I have to keep telling myself they aren't! I've never come across an inanimate object that feels so alive! And there is a serene quiet to them...hard to explain. I find that either I like something or don't. I make up my mind pretty quick, and I've grown to really like my lava lamps :) I believe I may get one more spare one sent to me in the mail, so I'm lucky enough to start my collection without spending any cash.I hope to get one used here, a bright blue one.

  So, overall, I enjoy the simple serenity and the organic, easy feel of lava lamps. I wish I could be as calm as the wax in those things! Hee hee..just floating around all day, without a care in the world...

[VOXul]

I guess I grew up in a house with somewhat hippie parents.  My dad always had a motion toy, from Waves to Magic Windows there was always something moving.  He had a red/yellow Century that I would stare at for hours so I guess that is where my attraction came from.  Now I have a few lamps and assorted motion toys scattered throughout the house.

[Brad]

you know, i've never been able to answer this question when people ask.  now i like them because they remind me of the 90's, which was a happier time in my life.  i still can't quite put my finger on why i like the lamp itself.

[Hopper Golightly]

Records, lava lamps and a girl named Mary Jane. It's all about mood and ambiance for me. 

Oh, and I'm also a lamp whore. I love interesting lamps and lighting. 

Also, I envy the wax too. It floats so nice and easy and relaxed. I want to BE the wax. 

[CrestworthLimited]

...Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and the by-products of a Flowering Herb....Ooops.

But mainly I would say being born in the sixties it was preordained in my DNA from what my parents may, or may not of consumed.

[Aladdin 2 Lava]

As child in the early 60s it was the colours... pre Pschedelia, day glow pens and hippies...

I really thought they were alive and from another planet.... dam it Janet !!!

[Tim Gill]

I remember when i was about 7 ish I saw some lava lamps and I was like - can I have one of those for my birthday and i got one and loved it. I have always been into colorful, weird, kind of psychedelic things. Most of my pocket money was spent on cheap lava lamps and i remember looking at some Mathmos lamps and thinking - there is no way I could afford that (when your a kid 40 quid is LOAD of money).

I went off collecting lamps when I got older but it has only been relativity recently that I got back into lava lamps, its 100% me though - color, abstractness, slightly techy and weird etc so yea that's why I collect them really. 

[Snicks]

I snuck into Spencers in the early 80s against my Mother's wishes. Before it was all said and done, I received a white/blue Lava Lite from Spencers and a Blondie LP from Musicland for Christmas. YAY!

Then I bought a Gemlite from a neighbor (which I still own) and the collecting slowly escalated from there. Lava lamps, color organs, fiber optic lamps, and of course records.

When I was younger, lava lamps and music made everything feel right with the world. I could escape to my glowing room with friends (or just myself), put on some music, and all was cool.

To this day lava lamps still help with that soothing, mellow escape. I will always have them in my home.

Random thought... Console TVs and floor speakers were damn fine places to put lamps. I kinda miss that in a way.  

[Ian]

I remember walking past Spencer's when I was 8, and seeing the lava lamps and i loved them and thought they were so cool, so my bro and sis got me a lava lite rocket and a glitter lamp for my birthday. I absolutely loved them, and so I started collecting. It wasn't a serious collection until a couple years ago, considering I'm only 20 years old. Most of it was kind of childish. But now I am serious about it, and I sure know a ton more! For me, the lava doesn't calm me, it gets me more excited. It makes my imagination run wild, while at the same time, keeping it under control. I'm not sure what it is, but I love seeing the wax connect, stretch, break apart, ooze, ect. The stretchier and more oozy, the better. But yea :) I'm bummed I missed the prime time for lava, when it was still good and made in the usa, but I'm happy to at least have been around and remembered a few years of it.

[Critter]

Me....I first saw one as a kid in the seventies outside some waterbed store in the Mohawk Mall in Albany, NY. and I was fascinated.  This was my first ever trip to a "Mall" (indoor shopping and all) and of course that was my first experience seeing a waterbed too so it was a pretty interesting day for a kid.  Now Mohawk Mall (in retrospect) was quite lame as Malls go but when you're just a kid everything seems bigger than it really is.  Never-the-less I could not get a Lava that day as I had no funds and my visit was with a friend's family so I did not have my folks there to beg and plead with and they would have said "no" anyway.  It was a couple years later that I had the funds to buy one on my own and I went into a Spencer's to buy a Century or Aristocrat and saw the Capri and bought the only one they had on hand....I still have it along with dozens more.  

For me, a high strung person, the flow mesmerizes and relaxes me just like my fish tanks do.

Crit