BALL TOYS

Imagine the family competitions you could have with this floating ball game. Hours of fun, minutes at a time! The wooden pipe is approx 6” long, and the 1-3/8” Styrofoam balls are yours to levitate through the magic of steady breath and balance. Oh, the wonders! Ages 4+.

And we say that with a history of silly that’s virtually unmatched. You slip on this pair of lens-less glasses with the tiny bucket and ball on a string attached, and try, while looking like a demented chipmunk, to swing the little ball on its cord and drop it into the cup. In red and blue plastic, you will be filmed on a smart phone, it will be put on social media, and you will be famous for it for the rest of your life. Best to order a couple so you’re not alone.

Newtonian demonstrator for science teachers. Mindless play for the rest of us. These are shiny, nicely balanced, high-performance examples of the classic Newton's Cradle - a ball on one end of a row of (5) suspended, barely touching balls swings into the others, and the ball at the opposite end reacts to the collision. The 11/16" dia balls in the small version (all-metal frame 6-1/2" high x 4" x 4-1/4") will collide about 30 times. The 7/8" dia balls in the large version (metal frame 5-1/4" high x 4" x 6", with a wooden base) will collide about 100 times. Awesome. Even more awesome that we paid someone to count the bounces just for you! (Unpacking note: Less awesome if you just yank it out by the suspension lines and pull a couple of balls loose. Be gentle.)

This sleeve of (6) orange table tennis-like balls is actually labeled for the campus-inspired game that involves some of the things associated with Ping-Pong, but not the net or paddles. You don’t even really need the green table, come to think of it. We wouldn’t use these balls for actual table tennis, but for the other game with red cups and foamy beverages, they’re perfect. Not that we condone that sort of behavior, unless we’re invited.

You could be, and you don’t even need electricity. These extremely old-school pinball games use just (6) little steel balls and gravity, which is pretty much everywhere, as we’ve discovered. Measure 9-7/8" x 5-1/4" under clear plastic with a spring-loaded plunger and 15 ways to score. No electricity means no TILT light, so you can tilt to your heart’s content if things aren’t bouncing your way. You pick the Hi-Score traditional game or the Treasure Hunt game with undersea creatures.

These 2-1/4” foam cubes are for squeezing when you've crapped out once too often. Just like their non-squeezable cousins, they have slightly rounded corners to encourage the roll. These soft dice are missing the 1 dot, though. What can we say—surplus! On the other hand, you’ll know the blank side is always 1, or you could add a dot, or (and we like this option best) you could invent a game where the blank side is wild and you get to pick any number you want. Bonus: every time you lose, you’ll be able to squeeze your stress away.

Show your friends and neighbors what appears to be a spherical fossil and then bounce it off the floor or wall and watch their jaws drop. This 2-1/2” dia, soft, squeezable Fossil Ball is a textured reddish-brown with tan highlights. Looks a little like a frosted ginger cookie—except it’s a ball. Study the dino bones on the surface, and then bounce it again. Ages 3+.

Not quite super-ball category, but plenty bouncy. We’ll send you (2) different orbs ranging from see-through with a bunch of glittery, multicolored stars inside to covered with swirled colors reminiscent of Munch’s The Scream or pink and yellow like a tropical sunset. All of which are super by themselves. Measures 1-3/8" dia.