Penny floater

A penny floater [1][2] is a kind of cheap football commonly used by children in the Western world.

[4] The floater part comes from the fact that as they are made of a thin layer of hardened plastic filled with air: their light weight makes them susceptible to floating or swerving with the wind.

Penny floaters are commonly used by young children; however, among older children they are an object of ridicule and mocked as cheap toy footballs unsuitable for use.

Nonetheless, their cheapness and the fact that they do not damage other objects in urban environments as easily as regular footballs do make them common.

The Jabulani was criticised for its performance, which was partly because its internal stitching made it too spherical to spin normally and more like a penny floater in that regard.