The inventor of the original version of the latest craze in children’s toys, the fidget spinner, says she got her idea for the device more than two decades ago while on a visit to Israel during which she heard about Palestinian youths throwing rocks at Israeli police during clashes and demonstrations.

Catherine Hettinger, who lives in Orlando, Florida, said she wanted to come up with a device that would distract and soothe children, ostensibly from the violence they were witnessing.

“It started as a way of promoting peace, and then I went on to find something that was very calming,” she told CNN Money in an interview on Friday.

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In a separate interview with the UK’s Guardian, she said the product was a result of a “horrible summer” when she was suffering from health problems while caring for her young daughter.

“I couldn’t pick up her toys or play with her much at all, so I started throwing things together with newspaper and tape then other stuff,” she said. “It wasn’t really even prototyping, it was some semblance of something, she’d start playing with it in a different way, I’d repurpose it.”

“We kind of co-invented it – she could spin it and I could spin it, and that’s how it was designed,” she added.

It wasn’t clear if that summer consisted of the trip to Israel.

The spinners consist of two or three prongs with a center bearing. An individual grips the center while spinning the prongs.

Her patent on the device, first imagined sometime in the 1980s, expired in 2005 and independent makers ran with the product. It eventually became wildly popular this year and the spinners made the list of Amazon’s top 20 best-sellers in the toys and games category as of May 2.

Hettinger said she didn’t renew the patent because she could not afford the $400 fee at the time. “I just didn’t have the money,” she told the Guardian in the interview.

“It’s challenging, being an inventor,” she said. “Only about 3% of inventions make any money. I’ve watched other inventors mortgage their houses and lose a lot. You take roommates, you get help from friends and family. It is hard.”

But she says she is not upset by the product’s success despite her non-involvement.

“Maybe if it was some kind of exploitative product — like a new style of cigarettes — and my only motivation was to make money, I’d have a different attitude,” Hettinger told CNN. “But I am just thrilled.”

“When you start seeing these things flying off the shelf at your local 7-11, you know things are heating up,” she joked.

Hettinger’s first spinner was introduced in 1993 and her patent was approved in 1997, but her version of the product did not take off, despite her best efforts to sell it.

In the interview, Hettinger added that she wasn’t sure why it became popular some 20 years later but that the collapse of the US economy — and much of the world’s — may have had something to do with it. Perhaps, she speculated, people were looking for more ways to soothe their nerves.

The device, she said, has been a source of relaxation for her.

“That was always the concept — to help people,” she said. “I experienced it for myself.”

“There’s a real need for this, ” she said.

The toys are available in different materials, colors, designs and settings.

They are said to be so popular that schools in the US and the UK have banned them, saying they are too distracting.

But Hettinger said she knows of instances where the toys have been beneficial.

“I know a special needs teacher who used it with autistic kids, and it really helped to calm them down,” she said.