bouncy balls

[Trickyvee]

Bouncy balls/ jet balls

You can still get them but I never see kids playing with them . Such a shame as they were so much fun for 10p. We got them from the newsagents (they were always hung up somewhere on cardboard), or from those orange machines that otherwise had the plastic eggs.

There was nothing like stotting a bouncy ball as hard as possible then panicking as it flew off towards a neighbour's window or a roof/broken drain to be lost forever. Small ones were good in the confines of a small bathroom too - stot into the bath and duck!

I loved them and bought one in Venice of all places for old time's sake, much to my then boyfriend's embarrassment! I lost it in one of the canals!

[Heather74]

Re: bouncy balls

My son collects them, and school banned kids taking them to school only a year back, so yeah they do still play with them we call them power balls.

[HG]

Re: bouncy balls

Called power balls when i were a lad

[Heather74]

Re: bouncy balls

Still are you can get them in the machines you put 20p in and twist the silver handle, like the gum machines

[Trickyvee]

Re: bouncy balls

We always had them at school. They were never banned but we were banned from having competitions to see who could throw them over the top of the school roof. The caretaker was sick of going up to collect the failed attempts and the victors weren't supposed to go out of the school gates to collect them from the front street. We never considered that we might brain somebody waking past!

[Richard1978]

Re: bouncy balls

I remember some quite good bouncy balls were given away in Weetos in he early 1990s. A few ended up on the school roof after attempts at see how high they bounce when thrown out of an upstairs window.

I might still have one around somewhere, thoght the rubber might be brittle.

A few years earlier a friend of mine got into loads of trouble by bouncing one at his house & smashing a glass lampshire.

[Sly]

Re: bouncy balls

I used to live next to a ginnel where all the kids used to throw their tiny bouncy ball. Used to be like a bulletstorm as you'd often have 20 kids all pegging these tiny rubber balls that would bounce round at seemingly the speed of light. If someone had a bigger bouncy ball we used to play a game called 'Hot Rice', good times.

[stuckinthe80's]

Re: bouncy balls

Called power balls when i were a lad

Yeah we called them power balls too. They were great. I liked the see through coloured ones.

[darren]

Re: bouncy balls

any one got a pic of what these looked like.

mi mind has went a bit hazy.

[Heather74]

Re: bouncy balls



they come in different colours and sizes,patterned etc , we had glitter ones and even ones with small figures inside!

[darren]

Re: bouncy balls

thanks for that heather.
yes i remember them now
i had a lot of these myself.
talk about a blast from the past.
great to see these can still be found.

[Palazzo]

Re: bouncy balls

Popped on an old pair of trousers just to slob around the house in today and in one of the pockets was a blue and white bouncy ball which I thought I had lost a long time ago. I come on here and would you beieve it, a thread about bouncy balls, lol what were the chances?

I went through quite a few of the things as a kid, most of them lasted a few bounces before landing somewhere in the garden, never to be seen again. Didn't they try making them more interesting and pop plastic toys and things like that on the inside of the rubber?

[darren]

Re: bouncy balls

Popped on an old pair of trousers just to slob around the house in today and in one of the pockets was a blue and white bouncy ball which I thought I had lost a long time ago. I come on here and would you beieve it, a thread about bouncy balls, lol what were the chances?

I went through quite a few of the things as a kid, most of them lasted a few bounces before landing somewhere in the garden, never to be seen again. Didn't they try making them more interesting and pop plastic toys and things like that on the inside of the rubber?

amazing that a threaf should start about these balls hust when u found one in your pocket.

these balls if im right bounced very very high indeed.

[Trickyvee]

Re: bouncy balls

I did have loads of bouncy balls. I think I started collecting them at one point as I loved the different colours and patterns. Most of mine were one fluorescent colour but I did like the ones with clear rubber the best, either with coloured swirls inside or glitter. I also had one with two googly eyes stuck on it in little holes but they kept falling off.

[Tortie]

Re: bouncy balls

We always had them at school. They were never banned but we were banned from having competitions to see who could throw them over the top of the school roof. The caretaker was sick of going up to collect the failed attempts and the victors weren't supposed to go out of the school gates to collect them from the front street. We never considered that we might brain somebody waking past!

We called them superballs (!)
They were banned at our school too after one lad lost his eye when hit by one , but my next door neighbour and I used to try to bounce them over the roof of the house, which we never actually managed (and somehow, it was always my playmate's toys that I didn't mind using for this mission... I valued my own too much, so used to fib that I'd lost mine )
I particularly liked the clear ones with a "streak" of rainbow-coloured strip running through the middle.