Philips Magic Lamp

The Philips PDF-040 Mood Lamp was a brilliant invention from the early Seventies, combining a mood ring, a lava lamp and a dash of magic science to form a bipolar light fixture that had the power to swing any mood.

Feeling down? Switch on the white light to brighten your day. Getting a bit hyper and manic? Dampen the mood with a dose of yellow greenish light. This ingenious machine –yes, it’s a Philips original!- could balance erratic moods and make you moderately happy non-stop without effort or side-effects.

Maybe I should have kept it. But then again, it’s hardly fair to burden an innocent lamp with the problems of the human world. It must have already seen plenty of horrors in its forty something years of service, and in the end all deserve some heavenly bliss, whether human or machine.

According to an ad in Philips Hobbyskoop –Philips actually had its own magazine!- from December 1972 it’s a ‘Dark Room Lamp’. But I find that hard to believe.