Flying Potatoes: A New Gaming Adventure!

The Wing Hummingbird 7000W-B delivery drone tips the scales at under 15 pounds and boasts 16 propellers—four for horizontal flight and 12 for vertical lift. It can zip along at a top speed of 60 miles per hour, carry up to 2.7 pounds, and has a delivery range of about six miles. Plus, it’s FAA-approved for beyond-line-of-sight operation, making it a remarkable piece of tech.

My primary use for it so far? Sending potatoes to friends.

It all kicked off a few Sunday mornings ago when my neighbor Will added me and a handful of other local dads to a group chat. I recognized only a couple of the numbers.

“Anyone looking for some silly stuff to entertain the kids?” he asked, sharing a video of a drone dropping a blue doggie bag in his backyard. He had just discovered that we were now within the delivery range of a drone service that could drop household items on our lawns in about 25 minutes. “Hopefully, the liquor store will get on board soon.”

Ever since I saw a video of an Amazon drone dropping a package into a pool, I’ve been curious: Can you order drone deliveries to someone else’s yard? I tossed the question into the chat.

A few minutes later, Will replied, “Nathan, I just ordered you a potato to see if I can send it to someone else. It’s 8 minutes out.”

Two minutes after that, another neighbor, Rick, chimed in: “Will just want you to know you’re going to get your potato first.”

Both Will and Rick had scoured the list of over two thousand deliverable items and reached the same conclusion: “There is currently an air strike squadron of potatoes headed to our neighborhood,” Rick joked.

At 12:14 PM, a drone dropped a doggie bag in my yard. Inside was a single russet potato and a bottle of water. Three minutes later, another drone arrived at Will’s yard, also delivering a potato and a bottle of water (which seems to be standard ballast for every Wing order I’ve placed).

Someone posted, “The drones are everywhere.” Those of us who hadn’t met introduced ourselves. A more practical dad named Jason ordered a pair of gloves. Dev, who lives just outside the drone’s range, could only watch in envy. Eventually, a storm rolled in, and the potato deliveries slowed down.

My sixth-grader turned our sky potato into oven fries, while Will opted to bake his.

The wild part? Each potato delivery cost just 82 cents. Each order came from a Walmart Supercenter a few miles away. Wing is clearly losing money on this venture. There’s no minimum order, no delivery fee, and prices match in-store. They’re not even collecting sales tax. Welcome back, millennial lifestyle subsidy!

At these prices, if you’re not using drones to send potatoes to your neighbors, you’re missing out. That evening, I remembered my friend Bill had been having a tough time lately, so I sent him a potato.

Sure, technically, Wing’s terms of service state, “You will not use the Service to engage in any unlawful behavior, or to cause harassment, nuisance, annoyance or inconvenience to Wing, its users or any other person.” I can see how someone could misuse the system.

While I didn’t have explicit permission to land a drone potato in Bill’s yard, I felt confident I had his spiritual approval. This was confirmed a couple of days later when he asked me to drone deliver some candy for his kids. I sent the candy, then another potato, and finally the link to the Wing app.

So, what’s stopping someone from using this to annoy others, aside from their own moral compass? When I asked about safeguards against unauthorized deliveries, a Wing spokesperson explained:

> Wing has safely completed over 1 million residential drone deliveries, averaging thousands per day. Customers must be physically present for their first order, and every order requires a verified account and confirmation of a clear delivery zone. Just like traditional delivery or mailing a package, customers can choose to send an order to a friend or family member’s address in eligible service areas. If a resident has concerns about a delivery to their property, our support team can assist.

Now, is drone delivery wasteful? If you’re only ordering a single lightweight item—like deodorant, sunscreen, or a potato—it might be more eco-friendly than driving to the store. And as long as it’s subsidized, it’s cheaper than other delivery services. I can see scenarios where it’s genuinely useful, especially if you can’t leave the house but desperately need something like ibuprofen and a Gatorade. It would be absurd to DoorDash someone a single raw potato, though.

Of course, once you start ordering more than a pound or so of items, the math shifts. One afternoon, my wife ordered a box of frozen horchata mochi and a pint of gelato—among the few frozen desserts available. They arrived in two separate drones, three minutes apart, each with a small bottle of water. They held up surprisingly well during their 7-minute trips in the Texas sun, despite lacking insulation. But it felt a bit silly to have two drones for two items.

That’s how they reel you in, of course. They lure you with convenience while obscuring the true cost of the service. Drone delivery further squeezes gig workers in an already tight labor market, and it’s another excuse for big companies to keep wages down. You don’t have to pay a drone, and you certainly don’t have to tip it.

It’s been just over three weeks since we discovered we had access to subsidized drone delivery. Aside from the two desserts and a couple of bags of gummy Nerds clusters, I’ve mostly used it to send potatoes to the dads. I sent three last week, plus one to myself to throw them off the scent. I might have blown my cover now.

Recently, someone—not me—escalated things by sending Rick a broccoli potato soup. I’m pretty sure it was Will.

What have I learned from all this? I’ve made a few more connections in my neighborhood, discovered that drone delivery is way more useful to me than agentic AI has ever been, and realized that if given the chance to airdrop subsidized potatoes to my friends, I’m all in.