Stephen Fazio was an engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology when he came up with an idea for a toy. He collaborated with buddy Austin Hillam, then an engineering student at Brigham Young University, to create the ZipString.
It uses a tiny motor to rapidly drive the string in an airborne loop, seemingly defying physics:
Their invention went viral on TikTok in 2021; by 2022 they were on Shark Tank; by 2023 they’d launched the product, including with a Walmart contract; by 2024, they’d landed in Target and shipped a million units.
Fazio and Hillam aren’t sitting still in 2025. They’ve adapted their design into this ZipString Aracna, a Spider-Man-like wristborne model that glows in the dark:
It’s currently up on Kickstarter, where it’s netted $567,817 at press time, with 13 days left to pledge. The units start at $40.