Waboba Ball (Red)

Waboba is an outdoor toy and sporting goods brand based in Stockholm, Sweden and with offices in Guangzhou, China and Atlanta, Georgia. Waboba is the creator of the original balls that bounce on water. Even though Waboba began with “the ball that bounces on water” in 2005, it has since expanded to introduce a range of accessories and land items.The slogan used in advertising is Keep Life Fun. The name Waboba is a registered trademark and the balls are internationally patented.

All balls can bounce on water when thrown at a shallow angle with sufficient speed to hydroplane.

This was the principle employed by WW2-period British inventor Barnes Wallace when he developed the “bouncing bomb” used in the famous “Dambusters” raid against the Ruhr District dams.^[1] He had been inspired by the story of a technique historically used by the British navy that bounced spherical canon balls off the ocean surface to achieve accurate hits against enemy ships. Wallace worked out the physics by bouncing marbles, steel spheres and various size and shape balls across a pond and then a long trough before progressing to larger scale experiments. Even solid steel balls would bounce across water.

Ordinary Tennis balls or any other plastic balls will skip on water if thrown at a low angle at a fast speed.

In Sweden in the early 1980s, inventor Jan Von Heland got the idea of commercialising something that skips on water after throwing a Frisbee upside down and noticing it skims the surface of water much like skipping a rock. Over the years, he began to test different shapes, materials, and compositions until he discovered in 2002 that a ball could bounce more efficiently than other balls on water if it was soft and had a Lycra covering which enables easy flow separation at the hydrodynamic stagnation point. In 2004, Jan created the commercial concept for marketing balls that bounce on water multiple times with little effort, and eventually patented what has become the Waboba Ball.

The patent reveals prior art in commercialised water skipping balls such as the “skidderball” and other patent claimants.

However the boldness of the Waboba PR marketing efforts that suggested the waboba was the first ball to bounce on water, and the reluctance of online media to fact-check the spurious claims led to articles incorrectly claiming uniqueness.

The ball composition is made of different types of Polyurethane covered in Lycra, allowing it to bounce on water and float. Its patented design and durability gives Waboba its quality. To bounce the ball on the water, one must throw like skipping a rock. The ball bounces high on the water in between players when thrown at the right angle (overhand) with the right force. The ball does not bounce on land^.

In 2005, the Waboba Ball in widespread advertising made the false claim to be the first ball to bounce on water, a claim easily debunked by history and by simply throwing a tennis ball the same way and seeing that they easily bounce on water, and introduced it to the market where it later evolved into the Waboba Extreme.

However the Waboba does bounce very well on water and can do so multiple times but bouncing on water is not unique to the branded ball.

To date, there are now 6 different types of Waboba balls (Pro, Extreme, Surf, Blast, Big Kahuna, and Fetch) as well as several land items and accessories.

Engineered for sport performance, the Ababa pro’s heavier weight gives it advanced athletic control.