Dear Brainiac: Who invented the Magic 8 Ball? Has it always been made by Tyco? From where does it get its power? — mattyj, the Net

Chris Campbell, Tyco marketing veep, fields incoming Magic 8 Ball queries. Ask him a question, flip him upside down, and.... No, not really. Anyway, according to Chris, the prescient orb was originally part of a board game, the Magic 8 Ball Game. You’d spin something and move a game piece, and if you landed on certain squares, you’d get to ask the ball a question. Almost immediately people realized the eight ball was way more fun than the game, so it survived and the rest went the way of all snooze-inducing pastimes.

The original manufacturer was the Alabee Game Company of Cincinnati; some now-anonymous employee thought it up in 1948. Each year Tyco sells nearly a million plastic versions of the glass original. The answers remain unchanged — ten positive, five negative, and five neutral. Chris is a little cagey about where the globe’s powers come from, though he admits he consults it frequently and finds it “uncanny.” Well, I guess his Magic 8 Ball must have been on the fritz three years ago, when Tyco decided to market a 50-answer talking version. If it had been at peak form, it would have yelled, “Bad, bad idea!” We only want the nostalgic original, apparently. Until recently there were several Magic 8 Ball Web sites, including “Kurt Cobain’s Magic Talking 8 Ball.” But Tyco shut them down as trademark infringements. There is, however, a Mr. Potato Head site. To get around the legalities, it’s called “Mr. Edible Starchy Tuber Head.”