This extensive collection of balls from Office Playground is a valuable resource for anyone who understands the connections between busy fingers and open minds.
The collection includes some very different kinds of balls. One kind, which we couldn’t help thinking of as, well, organic, proved to be remarkably engaging. A good example is the Flashing Suction Ball. Yes, it flashes. Yes, it makes great sucky-pop sounds when you roll it around on your desk, and even more yes, you can make it stick on windows and whiteboards. Another, the Crystal Confetti Hi-Bounce Water Ball is full of sparkling, swirling glitter. And, like they say, it bounces real good. Another, the Jelly Smacker Stress ball “makes a smacking sound when you squeeze it. It shakes a little bit like jelly and is basically a very cool rubbery stress ball with lots of holes.” Each of these three balls has a different feel, produces a different effect, and yet is closely enough related to the others that, as a set, they make for an experience that invites the senses. Collect a large enough variety of these balls, and you have the basis for a powerful group activity. All too often, meetings where people have to think abstractly or creatively become far too abstract and far less creative than planned. Simply by trading balls back and forth between participants, asking people to explain their preferences or describe the differences, or perhaps playing a passing game like A What, is a perfect way to help people focus on their own senses as well as on each other.
Then there are the balls that are filled with other balls. One such is the Light Up Florescent Molecule Ball. Squeezing the ball makes the inner balls light up. There’s something vaguely reminiscent of something else that I’d rather not be reminded about. Something mildly disgusting. Which, of course, is a major part of the attraction with many of these executive balls.
Blobz
Blobz is a particularly squishy ball. As the people at Office Playground explain: “When thrown against any flat surface (glass works the best), they spread out flat on impact, looking like a spilled mess. Then, within seconds, they begin to reform to their original shape. Throw it against a window and watch it ‘walk’ down!” (Don’t throw these things on anything other than glass or metal.)
Then there are the kinds of balls that border on profundity, like the Inside out Stress Ball – another squishy ball that begins life as a smooth round thing, but is so flexible it can be turned inside out to reveal a squishy spiky ball – the perfect ball for those times when you find yourself feeling clearly squishy, yet torn between smooth and spiky.
Though we were able to test only a relatively small sample, we were uniformly impressed by how inviting, and different they were, and how valuable a resource such a collection is to the enlightenhearted manager, facilitator, or professionally creative player.