[4][5] The original Spaldeens were tennis balls that had been rejected for slight defects.
[4] In urban areas sparse in grass, Spaldeens became integral to many street games due to their bounciness and light weight.
[6] Citing the declining popularity of stickball, Spalding took the ball off the market in 1979, but it returned in 1999 to much fanfare.
[8] In his memoir, New York Senator Chuck Schumer recalls playing slapball with spaldeens as a child growing up in Brooklyn, and refers to the baseball-inspired game and its bouncy ball as his era's video game.
Some of them are black, blue, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow.