Doesnt look like much from packaging, but it does its job well.

You’ve all seen em: those hideous plastic universal car holders with ‘Sucker’s that stick to your Car windscreen leaving the tell tail ‘circle’ on the glass saying ‘I probably have a Sat nav hidden in my car, break in’!

Six ideas of how this little critter can grab a hold...

Well, Ive found a rather unusual alternative to those sucker based holders. Its called the ‘Spider podium’ and it is based on the idea of a spider with bendy legs that can crawl and hold onto things in your car (or more like that ‘face sucking’ alien out the the film ‘Alien’ that holds onto their poor prey for dear life).

Packaging:

As you can see from the pictures, it comes in plastic packaging with a simple green and white piece of cardboard. But who cares right? Just rip the packaging open and start bending this little critter ;-)

How does it work and whats the quality like?

Well, it works much like the good old ‘pipe cleaners’ that kids often play with. Basically its a series of bendy wire legs coming out of a centre loop. All of the wire and loop is covered in rubber (it comes in either black or white ribber colours).

What you basically do is bend say four of the legs around you mobile phone and then bend the remaining legs around or into the object in your car.

Push two legs into the vent and bend the others around you device.

Now the back of the cardboard in the packaging shows some ideas for you in nice little stick outline drawings – The likes of making a little stand for your desk/dash, grabbing hold of a Car seat headrest or letting it stick its legs into a car vent.

For me it was the car vent that made the most sense: after all i wont be sitting in the passenger seat for the head rest approach to work and there isnt a chance in hell that I’m letting my nice shiny mobile slide around on my dash!

Spanning two centre vents - Eskimo partner was not soo impressed with loss of Air con controls ;-(

As for the quality, there isn’t much too it (this is a pro), the rubber is

well ‘rubbery’ and will stop anything being scratched. The legs seem like you could bend and reform them till your hearts content. Overall, not bad.

Ok, lets see it in action…

Approach 1: Span two centre air vents:

In my car there really isnt much on the dash to wrap this little spider around, so I immediately went for the spanning of the legs across the centre console air vents. It amazed me how you dont really have to do anything but thread two of the legs into the air vents and then use the other two legs at the bottom to prop the spider up.

You can move and readjust the legs around the device in hundreds of different configurations

As you can see from the screen shot, it stays in place and can be easilly removed when you leave the car.

But the disadvantage here is that you have stopped two air vents from being adjusted. Now Im not too bothered, but my partner who likes ‘arctic condition air conditioning’ was not too pleased. So onto approach 2…

Approach 2: Use just the air ventr on driver side (by door):

This little critter can do just as well grabbing onto one of the air vents, so I decided to put it onto the drive side door air vent (see below picks).

I went on a nice little run to basingstoke to give it a try and it worked very well, no vibrations as it is rubberised. Also no movement (my mobile didnt fly out the window as I pulled my car park ticket out of the window).

Conclusion

I think this little critter is a success overall and I will keep it. Here’s a quick rundown:

Pros:

• No ‘circle’ mark left on windscreen after removal.
• Very flexible – you can pretty much bend this little spiders legs around any shape or size mobile (hell, any device really)
• No vibration – the little rubber covered legs take all vibrations.

Cons:

• Takes up a air vent (in my case) – If that bothers you, you may want to look at those traditional sucker holders ;-(

Price:

Halfords are doing them for £12.99, but I’m sure you can find them on the net for cheaper -Even at 12.99 I think its OK values – but it is only metal pipe cleaners covered in rubber after all!