Mathmos Astro and Astrobaby Bottles and Custom Astros in USA (cheap)

[Drew]

I am pondering an undertaking, that would save people who want these a lot of money. I am most interested in providing Astro Bottles because they can be used in American 52oz bases quite nicely, especially Century Bases.

I have thought about it a lot and it seems that everyone is complaining about the american (chinese) lava lamps, and everyone is always saying how much better Mathmos is, but that they are just too expensive to import. Someone here suggested picking a go between to buy the lamps in bulk to save money. I am willing to be that person.

I have already placed one bulk order through Electric Planet, and I have learned a few things. When I offered full lamps to people on ebay and on this site, I got very little response, and I believe that it was because that even though I was selling them cheaper than getting them yourself- the savings was either not enough or the economy sucks and no one can afford them. For this reason, I believe that buying the bottles only and just using them on existing bases would be the most economical way to enjoy the English Goodness. After all the Bottle/Globe is the most important part of a lava lamp. Sure, a base accents it, but the Lava is the real focus. This is all we really need. Who wants to deal with rewiring and all that- I have done it, and I won't leave the lamp on unattended because a part of me in the back of my mind thinks that it might just melt the plastic at the bottom of the lamp, catch on fire and burn my house down.

Maybe some of you already own an Astro Base, and can just switch out the colors as you see fit. No matter how you would use them, buying only the bottles is like half the cost of a new lamp- buying 2 bottles is like getting 2 lamps for the price of one. You simply can not deny this value.

My goal would be to make these available to you at a great savings, lets say around $50 for the first one, $45 for the second, and each additional one you buy after that would be $40. These globes retail in England for £22.99 which translates to about $33.76, and that is before shipping which is usually at least £34.99 ($51.38), so a new bottle from electric planet would cost a total of £57.98 or $85.14 shipped to the U.S. You can see how nice it would be to save this much money on these sought after Lavas.

The shipping would be your choice (at your cost). I would think that I could fit 2 bottles in their original box, within a flat rate $13.50 box, priority mail, which isn't a bad deal. I will of course recommend insurance as well. Could probably even do parcel post for like $8.00 or less who knows? I will only charge what it costs though.

I would be happy to offer all the colors, including:
Clear/White
Violet/Orange
Blue/Blue
Yellow/Red
Blue/Green
Violet/Red

And to attract those that may already have all of these colors already, or prefer even more selection of colors, I am prepared to offer custom colors. I have calculated what other colors may be possible by just switching out fluids for you. This would save you the trouble of having to buy 2 lamps to make the color you most desire yourself. Let me do the work for you. I have made a sort of color matrix that I will consult to calculate how many of each lamp might be needed to create these different custom colors. Here is a list of ones I will be able to make:

Liquid / Lava

Clear / Orange
Clear / Green
Clear / Blue
Clear / Red
Violet / Blue
Violet / White
Blue / Red
Blue / White
Yellow / Orange (doesn't sound like it would look much different from Yellow / Red though)
Yellow / Green
Yellow / Blue (I made this with 32oz american globes by switching fluid and it looks cool as hell)
Yellow / White

The Mathmos Bottles are ideal for this operation because they have twist off tops in the first place unlike the annoying caps on the American ones. I would offer these at the same general pricing of the regular ones, but it must be understood that unlike the regular ones, there will be a limit to how many of each custom color I can make based on the different Matrices I have created. Not every combination is a simple one-two switch, some require, three-way and four-way switches. To illustrate this a bit, I will give an example of my favorite Matrix. It requires the following bottles:
3 - Clear / White
3 - Blue / Blue
1 - Blue / Green
1 - Violet / Orange
1 - Violet / Red
2 - Yellow / Red

After switching these would yield:

1 - Clear / Orange
1 - Clear / Blue
1 - Clear / Red
1 - Violet / Blue
1 - Violet / White
2 - Blue / Red
2 - Blue / White
1 - Yellow / Green
1 - Yellow / Blue

This is my favorite matrix so far because it makes colors that are not available (Clear / Green is available in the Fluidium) and it skips Yellow / Orange (for the reason stated previously) and Yellow / White (which I can make in conjunction with the matrix, but I would have to color it yellow myself with yellow food coloring, something you could just do yourself anyway).

I created another matrix that does produce one of each of Yellow / Orange and Yellow / White (not using food coloring) , so if someone really wants those colors I can use that matrix instead (it produces the same number of all the other colors that the one illustrated above does). .

Of course, it could be that people are really not even that interested in custom colors, and if that be the case, I am happy to just order and distribute the standard un-touched bottles.

To really make this happen I need to order 50 of these bottles from England, this would be the magic number that would bring shipping down to what it would need to be to pass along the savings, I have stated to you.

What I ask of all of you: members of this humble forum, is: please reply to this post, if you are interested, with the colors you would be interested in buying, be they regulars or customs. I will use the information that I gather in a weeks time to determine not only how many standard bottles I need to order, but how many matrix sets I will need to create any requested customs. If I do not get enough interest in the custom colors, I will not even do the matrix thing and will just stick to standard orders. If I don't get enough solid interest at all, I will simply not do anything.

I have thought about what might happen if too many people want the same thing in the custom bottles, for example if everyone asks for the Yellow / Green. Each set of 11 bottles in the matrix sequence only yield one Yellow / Green, so in that situation I will have to either just give it to whoever asks first, or give the person who asks first the requirement of paying $5.00 more for the right to take it. This makes it more fair and addresses the supply and demand issue while not making the price retarded like ebay bidding does. Also, if there is an interest in certain customs, I might be able to work a special matrix out that produces more of those (it just depends on the response here). Also, you can just order what you need and switch the colors yourself- that works too. Make your own matrix and get exactly what you want, I am willing to help on that too.

I can sell them through ebay with buy it now, if someone doesn't trust me, but for that you will have to pay the ebay fees (all of them), because I am not calculating them into this offering, I want to make this as cheap for you as possible.

Please also, understand that this operation is going to take time, I can see it now, I place the large order and they do not have enough of all the colors I need (ei: Blue / Blue like last time I ordered). The order will have to wait until it is complete to be sent out for reasons of shipping, and I can not predict this wait as I still do not even know how many bottles I will have to order. I will not have this info until I am into the process. I will be fronting the money during this time, so you won't have to worry too much. I won't expect payment until I have what you want in my possession.

If anyone wants full lamps, I can get those too, but I do not really want to, as they are much more expensive to get- I would probably want the money up front in order to provide those- so you would be paying right away and then waiting however long it took for them to arrive from England, and also waiting longer, if they are out of stock on anything that may cause the order to be held up. They do have Astros, Astrobabys and Fluidiums in [Green and Yellow (special orders)] as well as the Telstars. I may also be able to buy some replacement bulbs for you if those were needed, but again, it would make my life more complicated, so I am not offering with much motivation on that either.

I hope to god there is some interest on this offer, I want to make it happen and am willing to put in the time and effort for you guys to enjoy these fantastic lamps.

Let Me Know....................

[Drew]

I can order the full lamps too, but they are not that much of a savings through me as just the bottles are. A astrobaby will cost $90 before U.S. shipping from me to you, and a Astro will cost $100.00. This is only a savings of about $20 off each one if you were to order directly from ElectricPlanet yourself. I do currently have a Clear / White Astro brand new in box that I can sell for $106.00 flat which includes shipping via UPS to any of the 48 Continental States. I believe you are in Washington, right? Another thing is that ElectricPlanet only seems to be selling astrobaby White / Clear bottles and not full lamps, so I do not even think I could order those anyway. If you want the Clear / White Astro, please let me know.

[Fat Freoli]

I'd like the following four astro bottles:

Liquid / Lava

Blue / White
Yellow / Orange
Clear / White
Violet / Orange


Thanks for this!

[Drew]

Are you sure about the Yellow / Orange? as stated in the details, I do not think it will look much different from Yellow / Red. If you are sure though, I can do it for you.

[Rosebudteg]

In that case, I'd like to get the Clear/White Astro from you. I'll PM you.

I'd also like to get the Astrobaby Clear/White bottle.

I'll keep it around until I track down an Astrobaby lamp.

If it'll save on shipping, I'll wait until the Astrobaby bottle comes in and have them both shipped together. But again, I'll PM you.

[Drew]

The shipping is included in the $106.00 flat rate price for the Clear / White Astro, so there really is no savings in shipping, as I would not be able fit both in one flat rate box. I will await your PM. I will put you down for a Clear / White astrobaby bottle though in the meantime.

[Fat Freoli]

Yellow / Orange sounds interesting but I'd consider something else if it's inconvenient. Do you have any pics of your Yellow / Blue?

Not to be a pain. I realize you've figured out the bottles required to make the custom combos. But have you considered Blue / Orange?

[Rosebudteg]

I've sent a friend request so I can PM you. But the long story short of it is I want the Clear/White Astro and the Astrobaby bottle. PM is just to work out how I send you the money.

I've also found the Clear/White Astrobaby on the Mathmos website. I tried to contact Electric Planet and see if they were going to be offering that Astrobaby, but the contact form is missing on the site.

[Drew]

Hello,

If you really wanted Yellow / Orange, I would just order one Yellow / Red and one Violet / Orange, and switch the fluids, then sell the Yellow / Orange to you and the Violet / Red to someone on ebay probably. Not really that inconvenient, and no I have no pics, as I have not actually made a Yellow / Blue with Mathmos bottles before, though I have made one with a 32oz american globe- I suppose I could shoot some photos of that one for an idea of what it will look like.

I have not considered Blue / Orange for a reason, and that is that when you mix colors together you get certain results like Red and Blue = Purple, Yellow and Blue = Green, Red and Yellow = Orange etc.... But when you mix Red, Blue and Yellow together, you get brown. So in effect mixing Blue with Orange which is basically Yellow and Red, I predict Brown lava would be the effect in this combo, something I personally do not find appealing. I do not want to get stuck with a bottle that no one wants, so this is why I have not worked this combo into my plans. This is also true for Green and red mixed together or Purple and yellow. Now I realize that Purple / Yellow is a very popular color combination that makes the lava look orange but the purple used was probably tweeked many times to get that perfect hue they were going for. I suspect that the purple liquid they used had very little blue in it, and was more on the red side. I would have no way of tweeking things here, so I am not going to try it- failure would be too costly.

Hope that all makes sense.

[Drew]

I have had issue with their site when using windows internet explorer, when I used my Apple Computer, the site worked fine, you may want to try a different browser, or I have their customer service email, its:

[e-mail]

Try that, they have great customer service and will likely respond quickly (within a 24 hour period).

[Fat Freoli]

I'm having second thoughts about the Yellow / Orange. But Blue / Orange? I don't think it would look brown. Check the pic about halfway down on this page: http://www.imovatedesign.co.uk/astro/hunterlamps.html

It's not the first pic I've seen of a Blue / Orange but the only one I could find now, and this was a Mathmos. If you'll make a Blue / Orange I'll risk it looking bad.

I would like to see your Yellow / Blue creation even though it's not from Mathmos.

[Drew]

Ok, today marks week 2 of this posting and I am currently up to 28 requests, I need 22 more requests to place the order, anybody else interested?

[Drew]

You might be right, but it is risky I think. Do you really want to try it?

Also find different pics of my Yellow / Blue Combination- The lava looks green, but unlike the Blue / Yellow that is made by the factory the Green is a deeper one, and you can see the blue when the lava gets near the glass, it is very cool- the pics don't really do it justice, but I tried.