12 kooky facts about the Koosh ball

Our ball has been landing in hands since the late 1980s. It is easy to catch, easy to throw and does not sting when it hits you — and its story is just as unusual as the ball. Today it shows up on social media, in classroom and therapy practices, and on office desks where people personalize a shelf of Cameos. Here are twelve things you might not know about the Koosh ball.

1. The Koosh ball was invented so kids could learn to catch.

In 1986 engineer Scott Stillinger was trying to teach his two young children to play catch. Regular balls bounced out of their hands and beanbags were too heavy, so he set out to build a ball that would simply stop when it was caught. He started with rubber bands and kept refining the idea until it became a sphere of soft rubber filaments.

2. The inventor quit his job to make it.

Stillinger showed an early prototype to his brother-in-law Mark Button, who had worked in toy marketing. They were confident enough to leave their jobs and start a small toy company, OddzOn Products, and Stillinger built the machine that made the first balls himself.

3. The patent was filed in 1987.

The patent describes a ball formed by floppy, elastic filaments radiating from a central core — soft enough to collapse on impact and absorb the energy of a throw, and dense enough to thread between the fingers for a sure catch.

“The filaments are sufficiently floppy to collapse on impact, thus to absorb enough energy to avoid any tendency to bounce.”

4. More than 200 names were considered.

Koosh beat a long list of candidates. The winning name copies the sound the ball makes when it lands in your hand.

5. A classic Koosh ball has about 2,000 rubber strands.

Laid end to end, the filaments of one 3-inch ball stretch for more than 300 feet.

6. People did not get it at first — kids did.

Early press compared the ball to a sea urchin and a tribble, and some store buyers thought the strands were defects. It did not matter: the Koosh ball reached shelves in 1987 and was a Christmas bestseller by 1988.

7. There was an official Koosh book.

Published in 1989, it collected 33 Koosh activities, including tag games and indoor challenges built around the ball.

8. The ball even had its own comic.

Koosh Kins, a short-lived comic series from the early 1990s, starred a group of Koosh characters with faces and hands.

9. A future Supreme Court justice weighed in on it.

When the U.S. Copyright Office declined to register the Koosh ball, the company went to court. In 1991 an appeals panel that included Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled that the Office had not abused its discretion, because the ball's look could not be separated from its function.

10. It sold by word of mouth, not marketing.

In 1990 the founders said they were surprised by how well the ball did without spending money on consumer marketing. Kids picked it up at the register, showed friends, and the company grew from there. It turned up in a physics class and in physical therapy sessions, and a fan club even mailed product ideas to the company long before social media existed.

11. The company was sold in 1994.

By the time the founders sold the company, more than 50 million Koosh balls had been sold and the line had grown to about 50 products, from key chains to footballs. A few years later the brand changed hands again, and the ball has been in toy aisles ever since.

12. The Koosh family keeps growing.

Today our strands show up in paddles, Flix Stix, Kornhole boards, launchers, Disney clips and Koosh Cameos — but the 3-inch ball is still the heart of it.