Koosh Ball
A ball made of 2,000 rubber strands, invented by a Silicon Valley engineer trying to teach his kids to play catch — nicknamed "The Pet Rock of the '80s" by the press who didn't get it at first.
The Koosh ball is a soft toy made of roughly 2,000 rubber filaments radiating from a central core — easy to catch, impossible to really hurt anyone with, and a genuine late-1980s sales phenomenon that spread almost entirely through word of mouth and in-store demonstration.
An engineer's home fix for a parenting problem
Scott Stillinger, a Stanford-trained engineer working in Silicon Valley, built the first Koosh ball at home in 1986 while trying to teach his two young children to play catch — regular balls bounced too unpredictably and beanbags were too heavy for small hands. His first prototype was literally a bundle of rubber bands tied together, which he refined into a natural-rubber-filament ball soft enough to never really hurt on impact.
The name came directly from the sound it made landing in his hand. Stillinger co-founded OddzOn Products in 1987 with his brother-in-law Mark Button, a former Mattel marketing manager who'd worked on Barbie and Hot Wheels — both men quit their jobs the same day to build the company.
From one toy store to 14,000, in about two years
OddzOn started selling Koosh balls at a single Los Gatos, California toy store in October 1987. Demand was immediate enough that by 1989, it was stocked in roughly 14,000 US stores — including Bloomingdale's, Macy's, and FAO Schwarz — and had spread to 20 countries.
Not everyone got it right away: a Sports Illustrated writer compared it to a Star Trek tribble, another reporter called it a "psychedelic sea urchin," and it was dismissively nicknamed "The Pet Rock of the '80s" in some press coverage — mockery that did nothing to slow actual sales.
