I made a laser cut analog clock once that automatically set the time off the internet. It used a sliding scale for the time and at midnight reset. It was kind of cool.
I also made a magic 8 ball that had hundreds of 8 ball like responses.
It is also easy to do flashing neon like LED signs now that LED tubes exist (as long as you have a 3D printer).
This was all done using a raspberry pico for the controller - cheap and powerful.