The games didn’t make it to market, but the balls did, and in 1969 the first Nerf Ball was introduced as the “world’s first indoor ball”. The foam balls worked so well they decided to develop a whole range of games around them, and then they took the concept to Parker Brothers.

The story goes that his team was working on a game about cavemen, where players had to bounce foam “rocks” over a net. His second success was developing the foam balls, which would later evolve to become the Nerf Darts we know and love today.

Reyn Guyer is the man you have to thank for two amazing contributions to mankind.īack in Minnesota in 1969, he was a games inventor who had experienced recent success with the release of his brand new game Twister (yup, this guy is a genius).