Oddzon Products, Inc.

Oddzon, Inc.

Thomas H Grimm

Scott H Stillinger

Mark J Rappaport

Arne Lang-Ree

William A Scott

Ron LaRonge

Christopher S Page

William S Law

Sung Hoon Kim

Arturo Meuniot

Abraham Flatau

Jose E Leal

Terry J Sanchez

Mark C Sorensen

Robert B Brownell

John W Hunter

Chester F Vanek

Christopher Fruhauf

Diana L Wooldridge

A lightweight bat with a pressurized striking portion and a separate handle portion.

Pressurized bat

A toy includes a ring airfoil and a launcher to launch the ring airfoil. The ring air foil is formed with a rigid body portion and an energy absorbing material disposed on a leading edge. The launcher is adapted to substantially simultaneously impart rotational launching energy and translational launching energy to the ring airfoil.

Ring airfoil and launcher

A launcher for a ring airfoil includes a magazine assembly holding a plurality of ring airfoils. The magazine assembly is coupled to a launching mechanism, and the launching mechanism provides an indexing motion to the magazine assembly. In use, the setting action of the launching mechanism indexes the magazine assembly allowing a ring airfoil to engage with the launching mechanism for subsequent launching. Additional ring airfoils may be launched by repeated actuation of the launching mechanism without reloading the magazine assembly with ring airfoils.

Repeater launcher and ring airfoil

A throwing toy is provided which is adapted to be thrown by a user for a flight through the air along a flight path. The toy includes a football-shaped head portion, generally centered about a longitudinal axis, an elongate tail portion extending axially rearward the head portion along the longitudinal axis, and a coupling, which interconnects the head and tail portions and allows the portions to be movable relative to each other, particularly to be rotatably movable about the longitudinal axis. Because the head portion and tail portion can rotate relative to each other, the user can hold the head portion in the hand and throw the toy through the air, imparting a spin to head portion causing it to rotate about its longitudinal axis throughout the flight. At the same time, the tail portion remains substantially fixed throughout the flight with respect to the longitudinal axis because the spin imparted to the head portion is substantially isolated from the tail portion by the rotatable coupling. The coupling includes a shaft and a bearing tube which receives the shaft and substantially locks the shaft in place against movement along the longitudinal axis while allowing rotation about the longitudinal axis. The head portion is fixed about the bearing tube and the tail portion is fixed about the shaft. Head portion is formed of polyurethane foam directly around the bearing tube by holding the bearing tube in a mold and injecting and curing the foam around the bearing tube. The in-flight football realizes the benefits of spiraling, namely, accuracy and stability. Simultaneously, the non-spinning fins provide stabilizing and gliding effects, further augmenting the flight-enhancement provided by spiraling. The fins do so without the resistance or turbulence inherent in spinning fins.

Throwing toy with non-spinning tail

Toys and methods for safely and reproducibly launching ring airfoils in a flying orientation. The toys generally comprise a member, a ring airfoil support mounted on the member, and a propelling element configured to move the ring airfoil support along the member from a first to a second position. Contact between the ring airfoil and the ring airfoil support causes the ring airfoil to move with the ring airfoil support as the ring airfoil support moves; this contact is overcome as the ring airfoil support decelerates at the second position, causing the ring airfoil to be launched with forward or both forward and spinning motion. The toys further may comprise a housing to protect the toy and user, a return element to place the toy in an engaged, launch-ready configuration, and a trigger to hold the toy in the engaged configuration until launching. As an additional aspect of the invention, components of the device may be chosen so that the characteristics of the ring airfoil at launch are within certain safety limitations.

Ring airfoil launcher

Capture/display packaging structure for a ball-like, or other hand-manipulable, article including an enclosure having spaced, opposite sides and an open exposure window intermediate those sides exposing a capture/display area for an article, and pinioning structure including at least one portion extending from adjacent one of such sides into the capture/display area adapted to pinion an article on display in the capture/display area.

Article packaging

A method of forming a ball-shaped unit including (1) molding an inner core subunit from a high-resilience, polyurethane foam material, (2) lining the wall of a mold cavity which is larger than such a formed inner core subunit with a thin film of an outer, skin-forming material--preferably a water-based, pigmented, acrylic emulsion, barrier release coating for urethane foam, (3) suspending the inner core subunit generally centrally within and circumsurroundedly spaced from the lined mold cavity wall, (4) filling the space intermediate the inner core subunit and the lined mold cavity wall with a soft, slow-return, polyurethane material thus to form an outer core subunit which encases the inner core subunit and which is encased by the skin-forming material, and (5) removing from the mold cavity, in the form of the desired ball-shaped unit, the assembly including the inner and outer core subunits and the skin-forming material.

Method of forming tossable device including game-ball unit

A multi-component game ball comprising (1) a generally football-shaped inner core formed of a high-resilience, polyurethane foam, (2) a generally football-shaped outer core encasing and bound to the inner core formed preferably of a soft, slow-return, polyurethane foam, (3) a thin, generally football-shaped, high-friction, grip-enhancing outer skin encasing and bound to the outer core formed preferably of a water-based, pigmented, acrylic emulsion, barrier release coating for urethane foam, and (4) a flight-enhancing, elongate tail structure extending from within the assembly (made up of the inner and outer cores and the skin) and extending outwardly along the ball's long axis, with radially extending fin structure forming part thereof.

Tossable game-ball device

A mitt having opposite, matching side expanses forming opposite sides of the mitt is disclosed. Each side expanse is made up of a foam layer sandwiched between opposed overlay layers. The mitt may be shaped for use either on the left hand or the right hand, with a web in the mitt having a reversible concavo-convex shape which is changed depending upon the hand with which the mitt is used.

Growing community of inventors

Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Thomas H Grimm