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This unlicensed Harry Potter battery pack makes a bad pun out of an even worse product

This unlicensed Harry Potter battery pack makes a bad pun out of an even worse product

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If you’ve read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — which I generally assume is most of the global population — you’re probably familiar with the Elder Wand, a powerful wand wielded by both Dumbledore and the dark wizard Voldemort over the course of the series.

The CELLder Wand is not the Elder Wand. Where one is a fictional, legendary magical artifact of ultimate power, the CELLder wand is a Kickstarter campaign for a possibly fictional hunk of plastic that surrounds a fairly ordinary 3,200 mAh USB battery pack.

I’m going to be honest here: I am an extremely dedicated Harry Potter fan, and I can’t fathom ever wanting this. As a replica wand, it’s awful — made of plastic and not wood, overly large and chunky, and with tiered extendable layers that make it look more like a cheap toy lightsaber than an elegant tool of magic. And as a battery pack, well, it’s just not very good for the price — early bird backers can pick up a CELLder Wand for $29 (compared to the planned $50 retail price), but you can pick up a 5,000 mAh battery pack with significantly more charge from companies like Anker for almost half of even the Kickstarter discount.

What the CELLder Wand really feels like is an early attempt at cashing in on the Harry Potter fandom — and specifically, the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite AR game coming from Pokémon Go developer Niantic. Back then, we saw a flurry of slapdash hardware spring up when the popular augmented reality Pokémon game hit the heights of its popularity a few years ago, including the Chargemander, a battery pack case for your phone shaped like a Pokédex from GogoToro — the same company behind the CELLder Wand.

But if your love of unlicensed Harry Potter merch and inefficient charging solutions knows no bounds, GogoToro is planning on shipping the CELLder Wand this September. As for the usual caveat, it’s still a crowdfunding campaign (even if GogoToro has successfully shipped portable chargers before), so use your best judgement before backing.