Staples Easy Button is an inexpensive toy that displays a perfect button

As far as buttons are concerned, there are few as well known as Staples’ “Easy Button” – a shiny red button from Staples that was featured in a series of advertising campaigns that started in 2005. The ads were so popular that Staples actually ended up selling real versions of Easy Button right after its launch – and since then it has sold millions of table toys.

The fictional Easy Buttons featured in commercials have magical qualities that allow the user to solve their problems (usually related to office supplies) with the push of a button. The sad irony, of course, is that the real-life version of the product is significantly more disappointing. Pressing it does not evoke a shower of printer ink or raise the Great Wall to defend against an invading army. Instead, it just plays a recording of the company’s “That was easy” slogan when you press the button (with a satisfactory click).

Outside the metafictional context of Staples’ commercials, however, the idea of ​​a big magic red button that you can press to solve a problem resonates with the entire hardware design concept. Of course, the real-world Easy Button is just a cute toy to leave on your desk or annoy your co-workers. But almost all of the hardware buttons that exist are born out of the same ethos as the most magical version of the commercial: it is a physical object designed for users to press, push, switch or rotate to solve a specific problem or perform a task.

Easy Button only imagines a world in which our buttons have been lifted to an even higher plane. One in which the things the buttons can do or the problems they can alleviate are not limited by insignificant things like electricity, programming or the laws of physics. One where no problem is too big or complicated that cannot be solved at the touch of a button.

But Easy Button’s journey from marketing trick to real product doesn’t end with a crazy cubicle accessory – because the internet took Easy Button’s initial idea and ran with it, with any number of tutorials available on how to hack the US toy $ 9. The most common hacks revolve around modifying the hardware with a microphone to record their own catchphrases for the Easy Button’s metallic speaker to speak.

Other hacks go further, such as installing an Arduino microcontroller that allows the previously useless button to be connected to a computer or custom hardware configuration. And with that kind of hardware and some programming tricks, the sky is the limit for what you can do with Easy Button, like turning on your computer, leaving a Zoom call or even asking for more paper from Staples.

It’s not quite the level of literal magic that Staples promises in its commercials, but after years, the converging forces of a marketing campaign transformed into an office toy transformed into a DIY tool have taken a complete turn: an infinitely long button programmable that can, in theory, do almost anything with just a push. And really, what more could you ask for from a button besides that?