Halloween is a good time to invest in a new toothbrush, but before you throw out that old electric toothbrush, why not use it to give your Halloween decorations a little life by turning them into super lo-fi bristlebots?
All you really have to do is fit an electric toothbrush into a Halloween decoration so that the bristles of the toothbrush make contact with the ground and it will move around in strange and mysterious ways. The size and weight of the decoration will determine how well the electric toothbrush motor is able to move it, and the angle at which the bristles make contact with the ground will determine the direction that it moves. You may want to use additional brushes so that it moves more smoothly, like I did to the severed hand decoration that I turned into a bristlebot in the video below.
Warning: Video contains droning DC motor sounds, you may want to turn down your sound or take your headphones out before playing this video!
And here’s a harrowing video of a plastic rat that I also turned into a very creepy bristlebot.
I used some old Oral B Pulsar toothbrushes for this project, because the batteries can be replaced but the brushes can’t, so I decided that making them into bristlebots was better than throwing them away. Other electric toothbrushes should work just as well and are a much cheaper alternative to store-bought animatronic decorations for your DIY Halloween decor this year!
