Do you know where your balls came from? [games]
This weekend, while trying to relax on a beach (but bored after ten minutes), I watched two kids toss around some variation of a Nerf football. It brought me back to summers on the beach tossing a Nerf Turbo for what felt like miles. I also remember those days when I can’t move my shoulder after years of throwing light objects as hard and as fast as my terrible arm would allow.
It’s amazing that many of the balls from my childhood are still just as popular with kids of today (don’t be perverted). Here are the origins, little nuggets of info and some personal facts about some of my favorite, your favorite and maybe even your kid’s favorite balls to play with on a warm summer day.
Skee-Ball
Invented in 1909 by J. Dickinson Este in Philadelphia, the first Skee-Ball alleys boasted lanes of 36-feet. Way to big for arcades of the time and playable only by people strong enough to chuck a ball that distance or experimenting with early forms of HGH, the lane was later changed to 14 feet. It was eventually changed again to the modern length of 10 or 13 feet.
After the switch, Skee-Ball became common in most arcades throughout the United States. Because prizes could be won by players, in some parts of the country the game was considered a form of gambling. God forbid people win things without paying taxes. This led to restrictions on the number of machines allowed in an arcade or even a banning all together. Eventually, people lightened the hell up and realized it was just a kid’s game.
Little Nugget: In 1932 the first ever skee ball tournament was held in, of course, Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Untold story: A miniature tournament was held by the author and his degenerate gambling friends in the summer of 1994 at Lucky Leo’s in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. The three entrants played for an entire evening instead of talking to girls. At least the author walked away with close to $100 dollars.
Wiffle Ball
Leave it to a dad to get involved in kid’s games. In 1953, David Mullany noticed his son and friend playing stickball using one of his plastic golf balls instead of the normal rubber ball. They explained that the plastic ball didn’t travel as far so it was easier for just two people to play.
This gave Mullany an idea. He cut holes in the ball with a razor and discovered that it caused the ball to curve and dip when thrown in certain motions. This made it even harder to hit. In 1955, he started manufacturing and marketing his Wiffle Ball- named after the baseball term to “whiff” or strike out.
Little Nugget: For years, Mullany marketed the Wiffle using pictures of star big leaguers on the packaging. It wasn’t exactly an endorsement from the players, Mullany just paid their agents to use their faces on the box.
Untold Story: The Wiffle Ball was a much better game than the one invented by my father called “Get the hell off the grass! You’re ruining it! If I catch you I’ll beat you with the bat.” It was more of a tag game.
Superball
“In a government experiment gone horribly wrong…” sounds like the beginning of a schlocky 1960’s horror movie but it’s actually the beginning of what we all know as the Superball stoey. A nutty professor (not THE nutty professor) named Norman Stingley was experimenting with high-resiliency synthetics. Sounds fascinatin…zzz…huh?!? Oh, right, the experiments led to a discovery he named Zectron. When fashioned into a ball (because who doesn’t do that with scientific experiments) Stingley found the Zectron retained almost 100% of its bounce. It bounced longer than a tennis ball and had six times the bounce of a regular rubber ball.
He took the material to his employer and they of course had no idea what the hell to do with it. Luckily, Stingley was smart enough to hang onto his discovery and sell it to the Wham-O company. Wham-O! Bet Stingley made a nice chunk of change.
Little Nugget: Wham-O! sold over 7 million Superballs in the first six months of production. Wham-O! Bet Stingley wished he held out for more money.
Untold Story: I lost a Superball in my aunt’s house. It bounced off a table and under a couch. That was in 1988. It still hasn’t been found.
Nerf Ball
In 1969, Reyn Guyer, a games inventor and possibly a villain from a James Bond flick, approached the Parker Brothers company with a volleyball game that was safe for indoor play. A game I imagine every kid in the late 60’s was dying for; all the boredom and impossible consistency of play of the beach game right in your own home. After studying the game, Parker Brothers decided to eliminate everything but the foam ball. Which has to be the ultimate punch in the inventor balls for any guy who spent sleepless days and nights on a product.
Parker Brothers marketed the ball as the “world’s first official indoor ball” claiming it so safe you can even use it around “babies and old people”. This totally pissed of the bowling ball makers of America because that was their upcoming marketing campaign.
Little Nugget: By the end of the year, more than four million Nerf balls were sold. Guyer went on to plan his next invention and finally get his revenge on 007.
Untold Story: Not sure who, but some brilliant kid figured out if you wet a Nerf ball, it becomes as unforgiving and damaging as a real ball. I’ll just pretend I was that kid.
The Magic 8 Ball
Fine, fine you don’t actually play with the 8 ball as you would the other balls I’ve mentioned but it did help pass many a rainy day during my summers stuck in my grandparent’s house or working at a summer camp.
The origin of the 8-ball are just as strange as the idea behind it. Invented in 1946 by Abe Bookman, but based on a patent by Albert Carter, the idea for the toy began with a scam by Carter’s mother, a psychic and fortune teller in Cincinnati. She had created a device called a Psycho-Slate that used a chalkboard in an enclosed box. She asked the box a question, closed the lid and a few minutes later a message would be written on the chalkboard. Guess who was writing the message? And then along scams Mary! The idea was then changed to a cylinder and then the current model of a twenty-sided die in blue liquid gunk they keep combs in at the barber shop.
Little Nugget: Of the die’s 20 possible responses, 10 of them are affirmative statements, five are vague and five are negative responses.
Untold Story: Summer of 1993. A basement. A girlfriend. Some stories should remain untold.
Click here to subscribe to the nOOb dad or follow on Twitter.
