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Ball and glove returning toy

Ball and glove returning toy description/claims

Our U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,963 discloses a toy that uses a ball on an elastic string, to bounce back toward the thrower. The ball can be thrown either against the surface or simply into air. The force of the elastic brings the ball back to the original wearer. This system uses a Velcro® based wrist strap, that can be tightened around a user's wrist.

The present invention teaches a toy formed with an elastic cord and ball, where the hand connection part is a glove.

These and other aspects will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment showing the glove, elastic strap and ball;

FIG. 2 illustrates a connection between the elastic strap and the glove; and

FIG. 3 illustrates an embodiment showing the glove, elastic strap and ball.

The general structure and techniques, and more specific embodiments which can be used to effect different ways of carrying out the more general goals, are described herein.

Systems such as our previous U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,963 uses a wrist band that connects to a user's wrist, so that a ball can be thrown and easily caught. This system is easy to use and inexpensive to produce. However, there may be certain limitations with such a system.

First of all, since the wrist band is used, the ball must be light and soft, because a harder ball could be difficult to catch and/or could cause injury.

Another issue is caused by the inconvenience of having to attach the wrist band to a user's wrist. If the band is too loose, it will fly off the wrist. This requires that the strap be attached each time the device is going to be used.

The present application uses the hand attachment mechanism as being a glove, e.g., a baseball mitt. A glove enables a different way of using this kind of toy. The ball can be made heavier, since it can be caught in the glove, e.g., the mitt. Even if a light ball is used, moreover, this provides some practice in using a baseball mitt. In addition, wearing and removing may become simpler, for example, it is much easier to simply slip on the baseball mitt, over a user's fingers, as compared with the wrist band which requires actually attaching and detaching. This toy also allows throwing the ball with one hand, and catching the ball in the glove on the other hand.

While the present device uses a baseball mitt as the hand attaching part, it should be understood that any glove or partial glove could be used, basically anything that fits over a user's hand and/or palm and/or fingers could be used as the hand attaching part.

An embodiment is shown in FIG. 1. A glove 100, here a baseball mitt, has a number of finger attachment parts, such as 102 which includes inner surfaces such as 103 into which the user's palm is attached. The finger parts, such as 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, each include inner surfaces to receive a user's hand part. Part 104 includes inner surfaces such as 105 that receive an index finger of the user, for example. The user can therefore place a hand into the glove, and automatically and immediately form an attachment to the cord and ball.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

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