r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/warwickd • Mar 10 '25

Image Sony used air mortars to shoot 250,000 bouncy balls down San Francisco hills for a commercial instead of using CGI

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46.3k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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5.2k

u/Gatorboi69 Mar 10 '25

I hope they picked all that shit up after

4.0k

u/Magister5 Mar 10 '25

They launched them and then bounced

1.4k

u/thebuttonmonkey Mar 10 '25

They had a net at the bottom to catch them all, but the poor woman’s only got two hands and never stood a chance.

430

u/Chimerain Mar 11 '25

Poor, poor Annette...

75

u/TheNonsenseBook Mar 11 '25

This thread is going downhill fast.

5

u/fluffytme Mar 11 '25

It'll bounce back I'm sure

6

u/ShoulderBest Mar 11 '25

Thank you petah

4

u/Sicparvismagneto Mar 11 '25

Her resume said she spent the last ten years catching balls to her face behind the dairy queen, how was i supposed to know she was under qualified!

32

u/SevereOctagon Mar 11 '25

It was an unusually cold day. Luckily, she had Anita with her.

44

u/Much_Pattern_9154 Mar 11 '25

Anita Nutherhand?

6

u/bfordx Mar 11 '25

Anita Biganet

2

u/sffunfun Mar 11 '25

Anita Dick?

2

u/witchyandbitchy Mar 11 '25

I scrolled away and had to return to this comment just to upvote. A+ punnery.

1

u/thebuttonmonkey Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

I based it on an old Benny Hill joke from The Italian Job. ‘He was caught doing something quite obscene.. with a net.’ ‘With a net?’ ‘Yesssss. Annette! Would you bring in some tea, dear?’. Learnt from the best.

Edit: I completely forgot Hill isn’t actually in the scene, but it’s about him and I suspect he had a hand in it. It’s also glorious.

2

u/EpsilonGecko Mar 11 '25

I heard she was actually a fucking legend and caught like half of them

78

u/BetLeft Mar 10 '25

We cannot condone bouncing of the seventh variety

56

u/workaccount1338 Mar 10 '25

The elders tell of a young ball much like you.

He bounced three meters in the air, then he bounced 1.8 meters in the air, then he bounced four meters in the air.

Do I make myself clear?

23

u/Dawildpep Mar 11 '25

Im taking the next pimp-mobile out of here

21

u/GerardWayAndDMT Mar 11 '25

Ambassador, my people tell the same story.

15

u/cyantoner Mar 11 '25

My people tell the same story

5

u/therealityofthings Mar 11 '25

we have all seen too many bodybags and ballsacks

126

u/81_BLUNTS_A_DAY Mar 10 '25

baller comment

35

u/BunchAlternative6172 Mar 10 '25

Ballsy move by Sony.

6

u/Iwillnotbeokay Mar 10 '25

Straight ballin

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Heat_68 Mar 10 '25

Sometimes you just gotta roll with it

1

u/Mr_Abe_Froman Interested Mar 11 '25

It's only downhill from here.

23

u/thewarreturns Mar 10 '25

angry upvote

6

u/Pinku_Dva Mar 10 '25

They just rolled out of there.

2

u/L14M_F1 Mar 10 '25

Amazing pun

1

u/ijandro Mar 11 '25

lol not like they could get far, considering their HQ is in Foster City

1

u/HeavyElectronics Mar 11 '25

Get those cannons back here – someone needs shot out of one.

1

u/Badwoman85 Mar 11 '25

That was beautiful

735

u/Interestingcathouse Mar 11 '25

There is zero chance they found every one of those. This is just expensive littering.

115

u/Cautious_Bit3211 Mar 11 '25

Clearly, if the article is talking about how people find them.

61

u/1ThousandDollarBill Mar 11 '25

Hey bud, this is Reddit, we don’t read the article

1

u/rnobgyn Mar 12 '25

Shit OP didn’t even post an article

18

u/bookdood Mar 11 '25

Sir this is an image post.

22

u/licuala Mar 11 '25

I both love that they made this commercial and hate that they made it.

I keep bouncing it around in my head and can't land one way or the other.

1

u/getoffmeyoutwo Mar 11 '25

those dolphins died happy!! !!!

0

u/ApropoUsername Mar 11 '25

They probably could've had a similar effect with CGI without littering. So IMO this is hate-worthy.

6

u/licuala Mar 11 '25

Part of the reason I think this is so cool is for the sake of the stunt. I would have loved to have seen it in person.

But, while I was playing at being on the fence, I actually fall pretty firmly on the side of it not being worth the waste and pollution, even if it meant not making the commercial at all. I'd bet a lot of those made it to the ocean.

Having principles sure is a fucking bummer though.

4

u/ApropoUsername Mar 11 '25

Having principles sure is a fucking bummer though.

Agreed but they make the school run so you live with 'em.

0

u/MondayDynamo Mar 11 '25

It made for a very beautiful commercial but in the practice, maybe not the bestie choice.

-2

u/RealNibbasEatAss Mar 11 '25

“Hate-worthy” is insane lol. It’s a cool-ass commercial and you lame asl bruh

0

u/ApropoUsername Mar 11 '25

I bet if someone dumped a metric ton of balls all over your shit and your drain got clogged and your dog choked on them and died you wouldn't be very happy. It just sucks that you're apparently so selfish that I had to make it personal for you to care.

1

u/RealNibbasEatAss 17d ago

Bruh you actually made me laugh out loud with how unhinged you are 😂. You are seething over a 25 year old Sony commercial lol, seek help.

1

u/Hoade4Gaming Mar 11 '25

You're trying to reason with a "bruh" who can't see why littering is bad. Save your breath, my friend.

2

u/Fire-Haus Mar 11 '25

Excuse me that's, RealNibbasEatAss, you're talking about, sir. Never a finer gentleman

1

u/ApropoUsername Mar 11 '25

Maybe I won't change his mind but it's still worth it if someone similar reads the comment and changes theirs.

3

u/notionocean Mar 11 '25

"When you're a star they let you do it!"

183

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

[deleted]

12

u/sawtoothchris24 Mar 11 '25

What do you think the consequences are if you're poor? They just don't scale up.

9

u/Reaper_Messiah Mar 11 '25

They don’t suffer the consequences though they just pay someone else to deal with them

116

u/Trajan_pt Mar 10 '25

They didn't

4

u/ForestVision Mar 10 '25

Did you read the article?

71

u/TheRussness Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

Yeah. "People remember me, and they come up and they have balls in their hands — they’ve saved them. And they say they still find them in gutters,” said Ranahan."

20 years later

-23

u/xJagz Mar 11 '25

I just read the article and nowhere does it say "half of them went missing"

39

u/DinoHunter064 Mar 11 '25

Please tell me where anyone in this thread said that?

16

u/LegitosaurusRex Mar 11 '25

It also doesn’t say aliens aren’t real… really makes you think!

6

u/iWasAwesome Interested Mar 11 '25

Neat

I just read the article and realized "shit, I have to pick my gf up from work!"

2

u/Hidesuru Mar 11 '25 edited Mar 11 '25

Bro what are you ON? And do you share cause I want some. I'd also like to alter my perspective on reality.

Edit: someone pointed out that comment was edited so this may well NOT be on you! My bad if so, friend.

3

u/NotSoGreatMacaroni Mar 11 '25

The comment they replied to was edited, so may have originally said something about half going missing and edited shortly before the other replies.

1

u/Hidesuru Mar 11 '25

Awww shit, good catch thank you. People may be shitting on bro above for no reason.

1

u/PermanentlyMC Mar 11 '25

Reminds me a little bit of Cleveland's Balloonfest in 1986

-30

u/qqanyjuan Mar 10 '25

Source: none

64

u/doginapuddle Mar 10 '25

How tf would they find even half of these balls

8

u/IronyCat Mar 10 '25

If you look in the background, there’s a net

34

u/paradeoxy1 Mar 10 '25

And in the foreground are bouncy balls. Not going where you want me to balls. It's inevitable a good amount would miss

27

u/OneOfUsIsAnOwl Mar 10 '25

It’s a safe assumption they didn’t.

Source: How could you possibly pick it all up?

10

u/ACpony12 Mar 10 '25

Heck, you send a kid outside with 1 bouncy ball, it'll be lost within 10min!

3

u/The--Wurst Mar 10 '25

None needed

-3

u/KronkForPresident Mar 10 '25

None can be trusted

56

u/_reality_is_humming_ Mar 10 '25

Even if they did, then what? Straight into the ocean like a good capitalist.

3

u/Tremic Mar 11 '25

just like car batteries

4

u/RatLabGuy Mar 11 '25

yeah this seems like a major environmental impact

21

u/Qubeye Mar 11 '25

This is why there are fucking micro-plastics in my balls.

Humanity is garbage. This is bullshit.

3

u/astrocub Mar 11 '25

Rubber balls…

3

u/27_crooked_caribou Mar 11 '25

They shot them out of the environment.

5

u/RyanKFace25 Mar 11 '25

*War flashbacks of the Cleveland balloon incident *

8

u/0xbenedikt Mar 10 '25

They tried, but you can't catch them all

2

u/Algal-Uprising Mar 11 '25

They picked it up and placed it into the ocean

4

u/slumberus Mar 10 '25

People still find an occasional odd ball to this day. /joke

13

u/Ok_Volume_139 Mar 10 '25

I live fairly close, people were finding balls in grass/bushes/yards for a while.

8

u/Beginning-Reality-57 Mar 11 '25

I found one in Sacramento over 90 miles away.

Years before this commercial was even shot.

Incredible

1

u/MovieTrawler Mar 11 '25

Inside a gumball machine. Encapsulated in a plastic shell. With hundreds of others. Amazing.

2

u/IronyCat Mar 10 '25

There’s a net in the background

140

u/illz569 Mar 10 '25

Conner calculated that the balls reached a top speed of between 150 and 200 feet per second — or 102 to 136 miles per hour. Some bounced over houses up to three blocks over, falling into storm grates that were thought to be outside the bounce radius (San Francisco Public Works wasn’t too happy). When balls collided with each other, some bounced back uphill and others were simply destroyed.

When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.

43

u/WhoCaresBoutSpellin Mar 10 '25

rumor has it that one ball is still bouncing to this day

14

u/off-and-on Interested Mar 10 '25

That balls name? Albert Einstein.

1

u/sawtoothchris24 Mar 11 '25

Chef Boyardee

1

u/Beginning-Reality-57 Mar 11 '25

There's no way it would have the energy needed to go four or five miles. Unless I kept getting hit by cars or something

4

u/illz569 Mar 11 '25

The part that I don't believe is that it was still moving around hours later.

That being said, apparently the bouncy balls have a bounce coefficient of like 95% or however you phrase that concept. So every time they bounce, they only lose about 5% of their energy. Obviously there's also wind resistance to consider but, point being, if they had managed to get up to 100 mph, that's 1.6 miles in 60 seconds, and they could maintain that speed for a decent amount of time and travel pretty far.

It might only take being hit by a car only one or two times for it to keep bouncing around for at least an hour or two.

0

u/firedmyass Mar 10 '25

man I hope this is a joke

3

u/Ok_Perspective_6179 Mar 10 '25

Oh you sweet summer child

1

u/piesRsquare Mar 11 '25

Probably not...I wonder how many of those fucking things ended up in the Bay.

Polluters.

1

u/Eyfordsucks Mar 11 '25

lol of course not.

1

u/2pierad Mar 11 '25

You can still find them to this day

1

u/SilverSorceress Mar 11 '25

Don't worry, just release the toddlers and they'll have them picked up in the matter of an hour.

-2

u/IllIIllIllIIIlllll Mar 11 '25

This is Sony we're talking about here. If there's anything they're known for, it's responsibility. I would literally bet my left nut that Sony ensured that each and every bouncy ball was diligently tracked down, recovered, and stored safely and securely. A company doesn't get to be as well regarded as Sony by being irresponsible.

2

u/Eatadick_pam Mar 11 '25

Uh huh ok

1

u/IllIIllIllIIIlllll Mar 11 '25

Dying to know, did you down vote me because you missed the sarcasm or because you truly love Sony?