Nerf Ball / Nerf Toys

A ball you can actually throw in the house! The original NERF Ball turned a simple piece of soft foam into a toy classic.

"Mom always said, don't play ball in the house". That was a pretty common rule. Then along came the NERF Ball - a foam ball you actually could throw indoors without a very good chance of breaking a lamp or Mom's favorite vase (yes, these are Brady Bunch references).

The original NERF Ball was just a four-inch ball made of soft foam. That was it. Throw it. Catch it. Bounce it off the wall. If a throw got away from you, there was a decent chance everything in the room would survive.

The ball actually started as part of a game that used soft foam "rocks." Parker Brothers wasn't particularly interested in the game itself, but they liked the foam ball. So they dropped the rest and sold the ball by itself. Sometimes the simplest part of an idea turns out to be the best part.

Parker Brothers promoted NERF as an indoor ball that wouldn't break lamps or windows, and millions were sold in the first year. Before long there were NERF footballs, basketballs with door-hung hoops, and other soft sports toys.

Of course, NERF eventually became just as well-known (or maybe better known) for its foam-dart blasters. So the original idea of safely throwing a foam ball in the house eventually evolved into having running foam-dart battles in the house (I'm not sure that was exactly what Mom had in mind).