 What's up nerds? Did you just come out a ready player one and wondering what this little guy at the end of the movie was? That little ball of goodness is a mad ball and I'm going to let you know all about them. In 1986, every boy and girl spent countless hours playing with their hideous mutated balls. Wait, that didn't sound right. A product created by Am Toy CEO Ralph Schaefer and artist James Grohman flooded the marketplace in a big way and collectors of gross, inappropriate toys froth to get their hands on mad balls. Mad balls were, as the name implies, a series of eight collectible rubber foam balls each inscribed with a gross monster face. There was skull face, slobulous, dust brain, oculus orbus, horn head, crack head, argh. And the least gross of them all was my favorite, a baseball called Screamin' Mimi. The mad balls were successful right away but had no lasting power, with means for about two and a half years, mad balls were everywhere. Am Toy released a second series of eight mad balls, including new creatures, fist face, wolf breath, freaky full back, splitting headache, followed by the head popping mad ball. In addition to the second series, mad balls made a few larger products that could actually be used. There was a football monster, a soccer ball monster and a basketball monster. Like most toy products of the 1980s, mad balls got tied into a cartoon series. Well it was just a pilot in the form of a VHS tape called Mad Balls Escape from Orb. In it, the origin of the mad balls were given and explained that they were from a distant planet and they could sprout legs. From slapstick comedy and rock songs, I was transfixed as a kid and I ended up wearing out my VHS copy. The craze of mad balls continued as late as 1988, but the fad faded quickly. There was a secondary VHS tape released called Mad Balls Gross Jokes, which to this day is quite hard to find. Check it out. This is the way Nostalgia operates 31 years later after Mad Balls initial invasion, companies like Kid Robot, AGE and Just Play have created a new wave of updated mad balls for our current generation. So what toy do you think the next generation of kids will miss out on? Let us know in the comments below and remember to subscribe to our channel. Until next time, I'll see you nerds at the movie. Peace.