A Ball To Arms!!

"Wild Bizarre Bounce!"

First things first. I should apologize for my current photo set up. I broke the bulb in the lamp I usually use so I have to use Jeanne's super high powered Gremlin thwarting light. It works but it casts some crazy shadows. I'll get a new bulb and pics for the next post should be better.

You can see what I have to work with here, and why it's so hard to get a picture without hair in it. That's Vinegar and luckily he has no interest in Madballs other than when I'm photographing them. Enough talk about stuff that isn't balls. Jeez!
This week, we have an awesome Xmas score from eBay. I found these Bizarre Balls while present hunting and managed to grab an entire set for $2! I had never even seen these dudes before the auction so...yay!

They arrived in a box with the manufacturer's logo on it, making me think an ex-employee was ditching some basement surplus. You can see a pic in this post.
Look at that 90's graphic design! Holy crap the colors! Swirls and explosions and that notebook print thing...it's like the opening credits to Saved By the Bell or a Trapper Keeper on acid!

I do love the mascot/logo of the Cool Products Corp. A little ice cube with shades? Yup. It's cool figuratively and literally.

Looking at the back you can tell Cool Products took this stuff seriously. Not only are there multiple characters, but they've all got names and drawings. They even tried to branch out from the other guys by adding new types of monsters and putting twists on the standards (eyeball, smiling guy). Not only that but they went all out and added......gasp....arms!

I usually like my balls to be just balls (ha!), but this is a pretty cool innovation on what, at the time, was a toy line that seemed to be dead. They're also smaller than a Madball (1.5" in diameter) and made of bouncing ball rubber. Good job Cool Products!
First up is Eye Gore. I want to take a second to appreciate how awesome that name is. It's a double pun, playing off both eye sore and Igor while adding a gruesome twist.

Soooo.....this guy is pretty neat. He's a standard eyeball bouncy ball, with lots of details in the blood vessels and a little highlight painted on his iris, but all the good stuff is in his arms. They got a surprising amount of detail in essentially two dimensional appendages. Much like the Oculus Orbus head popper, Eye Gore's arms have no skin. Just muscle and tendons. Twisty muscles and tendons with gnarled up hands and the end! Sweet!
Mutiny here is my favorite of the bunch. This was before Madballs had introduced Blech Beard, so this is a new monster face ball character. Not bad for a fourth rung rip off line. His face is really neat with lots of details like stitches, an earring, an eyepatch and cracked teeth. Those teeth are really cool. I love the way that color green pops on the red. This guys arms may win the neatest prize. One's a muscly hook arm and the other one is a skeleton arm! Ahhhhhhh! So good.
Snorrreeeee....I could do without this guy. He's supposed to be a punk or extreme sports dude or some such malarky. Well, his name's Punky, so I guess they were goin for punk. There's nothing really gross about him or monstrous aside for his beartrap green teeth. Not even stitches...even the lamest of fake Madballs have stitches. He's actually lacking on detail altogether. Meh, I'd've chosen another monster design instead of this garbage. I hope the designer of this dude reads this and cries.
Yaaaaayyyyy!!!! That's what this guy looks like he's yelling! I'm into him! he's not a monster in the normal sense but he's beat up and kinda sculpted the way Garbage Pail Kids are drawn. Swollen shut eye, a bunch of stitches, missing teeth and a giant crazy grin. That's what I like to see! His arms are kinda boring but I suppose the gloves really push the boxer thing and set him aside from a guy that just got beat up. And being from Philadelphia, I have to give Rocky some extra points for the name.
Cool, stylish, simple....classic. Frank, isn't breaking new ground but he's really well designed and sculpted. He's full of wrinkles, covered in stitches and I love those jack-o-lantern teeth. His arms are kinda lame, though. I wonder if they ran out of "arm budget" after they drew up Eye Gore and Mutiny. They have the coolest ones. It is kinda fun to make them high five each other...wait, what? No, I didn't do that. HIGH FIVE FRANKENSTEIN!!
Ok, now we're getting weird. This is just strange. I think he's supposed to be a riff on Screamin' Meemie but they just went all teeth. Like, so much teeth that they had to put dude's eyes on the back of the ball! His teeth aren't even cracked or fangs or discolored. Just huge! Oh, and he's giving us the peace/victory sign with both hands. Maybe he's Nixon inspired? I can't really say what the heck is goin on with Smiley but I think I like him. I wouldn't vote for him though.
Check out this dude's butt. The 90's for sure. Cool Products were classy. They put their stamp on each of these dudes unlike Super Bouncing Weird Balls (bane of my toy collecting existence) or Foul Balls who any of the nameless imitations that couldn't be bothered. It's nice to see someone take pride in their work. It's the monster face ball factories that power America! Well, China, and Taiwan I guess....sighhhhh.

This was right before the internet was invented so there's no website for the Cool Products Corp. and Google searches yield nothing. I hope they're somewhere still making cool products and putting as much love into them as they did these bouncy bruisers.

In conclusion...these are great! If you can get your hands on them, go for it. They hold up pretty well, they're full of detail, painted well and are an original spin on an old idea.