Truncheon Black Squeaking

This was purchased for my 4yr old son's birthday to go with his police outfit. He loves playing with it (and beating me up with it lol). The squeak can get a little annoying as it sounds like a dogs toy, but it is worth it to see my son having so much fun playing dress up. A very good purchase and speedy delivery.

Quite why this is called a Truncheon Black Squeaking is a mystery to me. Unless there are some legal issues regarding worldwide copyright I can only assume that as it is manufactured in Nanjing, in the Chinese Province of Jiangsu, its name has been translated literally from the local dialect of that region, and the UK importers have failed to apply the more logical name of Squeaking Black Truncheon. However it must not under any circumstances be confused with the Black Squeaking Truncheon, which is made in the Guangdong provincial city of Guanzhou. I have tested both and found there to be several key differences, not the least of which is the pitch of the squeak, but I will come to that later.

First, a little background history. Derived from the Latin word truncus, or trunk, it was first used as a baton of office by the Old French military - they called it a tronchon - and later (or possibly earlier) by the Earl Marshal, a hereditary Royal officeholder under the King or Queen of the United Kingdom during the Middle Ages who used it as a symbol of authority. A truncheon or baton (also called a cosh, billystick, billy club, nightstick, sap, blackjack) is essentially a stick of less than arms-length, usually made of wood, plastic, or metal, and carried by law enforcement, corrections, security, and (to a less common degree) military personnel for non-lethal self-defence, as well as control and to disperse combative and non-compliant subjects. A truncheon may be used to strike, jab, block, and aid in the application of armlocks. Truncheons are used to a lesser extent by non-officials because of their easy concealment, and are outlawed in many jurisdictions.

Second, some important contemporary background. As many members of a secular intellectual elite who participate in a forum accessible only to Vine Voice reviewers will avow, the negative vote truncheon has something of a dark and sinister reputation and one that has polarised opinion for an extremely long time. Well, a few weeks at least. The noted scientist and Nobel Prize winning inventor Kevin Roche is accredited with its creation, although he remains modest to a fault and has sought no publicity. It was therefore with considerable trepidation that I ordered a Truncheon Black Squeaking, in the hope that I could find out if any of the myths I had read about this legendary device had any foundation of truth.

As you can see in the photograph, it is black. Amazon provide only the barest of technical specifications by mentioning its weight of 32 grams. I took mine to the laboratory to confirm this and although fluids such as blood and sweat were found to influence this figure, its dry weight is indeed 31.97 grams. Of course one of the first tests that was undertaken was a measurement of the pitch and volume of the squeak. This inevitably varies in sympathy with the force of application, so the initial question was the minimum strike pressure requirement to generate a squeak of 0.1 decibel. The result was a surprise! A Newton metre is a unit of torque (also called "moment") in the SI system, and the symbolic form is N m or N*m, is sometimes hyphenated newton-metre. One Newton metre (also 1 joule of course) is equal to the torque resulting from a force of one newton applied perpendicularly to a moment-arm which is one metre long. Imagine the scientists' shock when they discovered that, in order to generate 0.1 decibels of squeak, 0.17 nM were required!! This was extraordinary. Of course this is way below human hearing capacity but it is highly significant nonetheless. It followed that to generate a 50dB squeak, the force required was 500 times stronger at 85nM - that's identical to a 1993 'L' registered Ford Fiesta 1.1 LX 5dr, to help you to put it into context. In other words, a 50dB squeak requires a fair old thump!

Next, some field tests. The objective was to secure a 50dB squeak from a selected target group. The first one chosen was a female travel agent from Basingstoke, and I hasten to add that she was fully aware of the risks involved and that the results would be made public. This ended up demonstrating that the lab tests had only limited relevance in the real world, because the same 85nM blow to four different parts of the travel agent's body produced wildly differing results. This was due to the contrasting absorbency of the woman's body; for example the buttocks were useless and generated only 33dB, not much more than half the required squeak level. Moving down to the thigh (left side), there was a clear increase to 41dB but the target volume was only attainable when the volunteer was struck on the head - and even then, only on the boniest part of her forehead. She was mildly dazed but none the worse for the test procedure, her main comment being that the buttocks and thighs were her preferred choice for experimentation.

I tried similar tests on an exchange student from Canada (a 20 year old female), an HGV driver, a checkout staff member at Asda (in Croydon) and a Community Support Officer in Ipswich, although he was not forewarned of the test and when hit on the right arm at 85nM immediately removed his own truncheon and threatened me with it. Such are the risks that need to be taken to produce a thorough report.

In summary I would say that the Truncheon Black Squeaking is worth the current asking price less of than one pound and as it is indeed a truncheon that is black in colour and does, subject to the aforementioned minimum thrust levels, emit an audible squeak, it does exactly what it says on the cheap and nasty Chinese packaging. I have tested similar models from Woolworths and a variety of other local joke shops (not that Woolworths is a joke shop, please note) but none could match the keen pricing here on Amazon.

Has to be a Best Buy.

I bought one each of these for my husband and the singer who performs 'Gendarmes' with him. They have used them to great effect.