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While you can’t knock Huss for their R&D, knock them all you like for putting their eggs in one basket. Even the tower of trash that was the Huss Condor has enjoyed more success than even the most successful of these Giant rides, the Giant Frisbee.

I have gone around in circles trying to find out exactly how many of these Huss have sold – if anyone gets a number higher than three, please let me know. Worse still is the Jump2 and Giant Top Spin, with only one of each being sold to Paramount, presumably with favourable discounts considering their order also included a Giant Frisbee.

Almost as if to mock Huss for the shortcomings of their Giant range, perhaps their most unsuccessful ride ever is shaped like a dunce’s hat.

Despite being a Giant, Delirium was designed to be a family ride with what is best described as four mini Frisbees suspended from an overhead turntable. Each gondola seating 16 people can swing back and forth as the entire ride rotates, not dissimilar to Mondial’s Swinger.

While Mondial’s Swinger is relatively small (and therefore transportable), Delirium has the footprint of Godzilla measuring an unfeasible 100ft by 100ft with the structure of the ride reaching 141ft into the air.

In the days when theme parks are filling up and having to employ rides with more conservative footprints, Delirium seems completely uneconomical.

And in the days when many parks seem to have problems building rides over 100ft tall, 141ft seems a bit rich, especially considering most of this is merely structural and not used for the ride itself.

It’s been said before that if the price is right, Huss would build these rides for the fair, but the attraction to the average showman must be neigh on non-existent. Not only are these rides overly bulky, but also as an example the Giant Frisbee alone needs five full-sized cranes to install it.

Of course, while Huss run around in circles with egg on their face, enter KMG who manufacture at least fifteen rides a year, and have already sold two of their answer to the Huss Giant Frisbee before the first has even been fabricated.

It isn’t all doom and gloom in Germany, though. Nor Hungary.

The Topple Tower is the most credible idea Huss have had for probably the best part of a decade. Turning the idea of the Frisbee upside-down, the Topple Tower at first glance appears to be a mutated desktop dipping bird, standing at a realistic 60ft tall, rocking back and forth, rotating as it does.

This is their most successful ride for quite some time, and seems to be attracting steady trade.

Since the concept was announced five years ago, a handful have been sold and appear at Djurs Somerland, Bellewaerde, Walibi Lorraine as well as Dollywood and Marineland (both opening this year).

It’s funny to think that in five years, by today’s standards the sale of five Topple Towers is classed as a success. Cast your mind back to 1985, and Huss introduced the Breakdance. Over the next 21 years, they will sell 110 Breakdances around the world. That is one hundred and ten. One. Hundred. And. Ten. Over the last two decades, they have produced an average of five a year. And their most laudable attraction at the moment has sold an average of one a year.

Maybe it’s a slow burner. To give credit where credit’s due, Topple Tower is a neat idea, and while it hasn’t set the world alight, it’s easy to see the draw for theme parks.

It has impact, it is marketable, and it is a great family ride. That’s probably why Chessington haven’t got one.

It’s impossible to speculate on the health as Huss as a company, and whether this profound new direction they’re heading in is keeping the accountants busy. But, this much is obvious – research and development costs money, while selling rides make money.

Huss have recently spent many, many man-hours developing four new Giant rides, yet have only sold five. Their effortless ability to capture the imaginations of parks and fairs alike seems to have been consigned to the history books. Continues...