Pop-Out Ball

The Pop-Out Ball is a toy based around the concept of surfaces and elasticity. The toy stars off looking like a cube about the size of a rubix cube. The faces are made of a rigid but soft material, probably rubber. When the cube is thrown or rolled in a way that temporarily removes it from contact with other objects, its sides sprign outward to transform it from a cube to a fourteen faced prism. The areas that were not faced prior are stilll open space, but now can act as faces thanks to the edges of the already existing ones. The idea behind this toy was to encourage a child to continue doing things like trying to roll a cube, since while it will not ever roll, once it gains more sides it becomes more like a ball then a box. The walls would probably be made of some kind of hard plastic and the inner mechanism that pushes the box outwards might be as simple as a core made of several springs that are strong enough to push the object out, but not strong enough to made it bounce or force it open while there is some kind of pressure on it.

Toy concept 1 | Toy concept 2 < Your name >
Carnegie Mellon University
January 23, 2007