Museums, art galleries, sports stadiums, and a host of other places have banned the selfie stick as the world-wide backlash against the trend continues.

But there will soon be a sneaky way around the ban, thanks to the first wearable selfie stick that can be worn on the wrist.

The Pop Stick (shown above) has been created as a ‘wristband selfie stick’ that’s based on the early 90’s slap bracelet. It can be worn around the wrist and then unfurled to its full 60cm length.

Its creator Tom Shrive, who also runs Arc Wearables, told Factor that 50,000 orders for the sticks have already been placed, despite the wristband still being developed.

“We looked at the selfie stick. I personally would never ever carry around a selfie stick – the thought is terrifying,” Shrive said.

“They’re clunky, they’re big, you can’t put them in your pocket, you can’t walk around. If you’re travelling or sightseeing, you’ve got to carry the stick around everywhere with you.

“We looked at that problem and we thought there must be a better way, a more convenient way of being able to take photos of yourself or put yourself in the moment.”

As wearable technology goes it isn’t the most sophisticated device but the engineering underneath the surface is slightly more advanced than the slap bracelet, Shrive told Factor at the RE.WORK Internet of Things Summit in London, adding:

“We did some research and decided that slap bracelets were kind of cool back in the day when you were a kid. They’re quite good fun to play with and obviously that goes from a wristband format straight into a stick.”

“We did a lot of experimenting with the slap bracelet. They use bistable steel as a construction, we tried that and the phone just dropped straight off. It was not strong enough by any shot of the imagination.

“So we found this company in the UK that uses bistable polyurethane. It’s main application is for military masts. We spoke to them and they said that they loved the idea for a selfie stick.”

Tom on stage @ #pitchatpalace brave enough to do a live demo of the #thepopstick prototype – nice! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/uI6uLP68um — The Pop Stick (@thepopstick) March 12, 2015



Tourists and visitors have been banned from taking selfies with sticks at venues from Europe to Brazil. A list of venues banning the sticks includes Wembley Stadium, in London, and 19 Smithsonian Museums. The Colosseum, in Rome, is one of the lastest places to ban the selfie stick, which surged in popularity at the end of 2014.

Despite this the wearable stick might be one way for budding selfie-takers to discreetly sneak a picture without carrying an obvious metallic pole around.

The final design for the stick is still in the making, but work is well underway, Shrive said.

“We have got a prototype, we know it works, everything has been validated we just need to now do some design for manufacture. That’s going to take us about a month and we will then be passing over to the tooling manufacturer to knock out at least 50,000, which we now have orders for.”

Image one courtesy of Pop Stick