Volleybird, a Latin Import, Takes Wing as Fast-Selling Sports Item

In 1986, when games expert and author Scot Morris of Del Mar was in Brazil on a trip to see Halley’s comet, a centuries-old Brazilian toy called peteca caught his eye.

Lounging on a beach, he noticed that Brazilians young and old used the toy, a kind of cross between a badminton shuttlecock and a beanbag, in a game that closely resembled volleyball.

Morris, who has made a name for himself in the recreation industry as games columnist for Omni magazine, thought that the brightly colored toy could become equally popular in the United States. Morris’ opinions on such topics carried weight: he successfully predicted the popularity of Pac Man, Rubik’s Cube and Trivial Pursuit long before they became hits.

Morris came home from Brazil expecting to feature the toy in one of his columns. But, after seeing that the game was virtually unknown in this country, Morris decided to do more than just write about it. He began devising ways of establishing Volleybird, as he later dubbed the toy, as a viable game in the United States.

In January, Morris formed Volleybird Inc., a Del Mar-based company, to import and market the game in the United States. Morris has invested more than $120,000 of his own money in the venture, and is the company’s only shareholder. He said the company may be profitable by the end of this year.

In its first six months in business, Volleybird had sales of $125,000, shipping 28,000 units, according to Dave Finnigan, president of Jugglebug Inc., the company’s distributor.

Morris’ game thus has become the latest entrant in a specialized, recreational sports-toy market that, in 1989, accounted for an estimated $339 million in sales, a figure that excludes traditional sports equipment such as baseball, tennis and football, said Jodi Levin, a spokeswoman for Toy Manufacturers of America, an industry trade association.

The Volleybird shuttlecock is swatted with an open hand, unlike ones that are hit with a racquet or kicked with the feet. The object of the game is to keep the birdie in the air.

The toy itself is handmade and consists of fluorescent chicken or turkey feathers at the top, with a base made of artificial leather containing foam and a bag of sawdust. It comes in eight models, in assorted sizes and configurations.

The game’s non-competitive aspect will make it successful, said Morris, who has also written three books including “The Book of Strange Facts and Useless Information.”

The whole point of Volleybird “is to break through to people who do not want to win or lose,” Morris said recently, as he demonstrated how the game is played on a patio outside the spacious Del Mar home that doubles as his office. “The essence of this is so cooperative, it’s very much like Smashball,” in that the other player or players must hit it back to keep the game going, he said.

“People don’t like games that make them look stupid or awkward,” Morris said. “They don’t like to lose.”

Volleybird’s design makes it easy for even the most uncoordinated player to catch on. All it takes “is 10 seconds of seeing” to learn how to play the game, Morris said. The feathers slow the shuttlecock enough so that even the slowest of players can run under it and slap it back, he said.

Dan Roddick, director of sports promotions for Wham-O, the San Gabriel-based manufacturer of Frisbee discs, said the Volleybird holds tremendous commercial promise.

The Volleybird “plays on that same basic wave of interaction” that made Smashball and Frisbee successful, Roddick said. “I think it has tremendous potential because it is a new twist, particularly for Americans. And it requires so little equipment,” he said.

Like Frisbee, Volleybird’s market consists of “people who want to stand on the beach and exchange an object back and forth between them,” Roddick said.

Roddick called Morris one of the country’s preeminent gamesmen. “I’d say that, if he says (Volleybird’s) a winner, it’s worthy of note,” Roddick said.

The Frisbee disc, which burst onto the American scene in the late 1950s, is recognized as the benchmark by which the other sports-toys are measured. About 90% of the U.S. population has played with one of the discs, according to company research. Frisbee enthusiasts now compete in a variety of disc-oriented sports.

Morris became convinced of Volleybird’s commercial potential while watching a man and his daughter playing the game on a beach in Brazil.

“She was ready to quit. Her attention would wander,” Morris said. “He would be saying ‘Come on, let’s play more. Hit it back to me.’ I’d never seen that before in all my years of studying games--an action game where the parent is playing with the child, and the parent wants to play more.”

Although Morris predicted the successes of several toys that later became hot-selling, he was entering new territory with Volleybird, .

“I’m not a manufacturer or businessman. I’m a writer, a goofball, sort of eclectic,” he said. “I think I’m good at picking things, I’m not that good at playing things, necessarily.”

Scattered about his living room are an eclectic mix of games. On a shelf to the side of a flapping chrome bird are precursors of the Volleybird, including a Bolivian-influenced shuttlecock introduced in the United States with limited success under the name of Topo.

When Morris, 47, brought three of the peteca shuttlecocks back with him in 1986, he kept them in his apartment to show friends in the games industry.

“Most of them said, ‘Gee, that’s really interesting. You’re right, that would sell in the United States.’ ”

But it wasn’t until he showed the toy to Finnigan of Jugglebug that he was able to give the idea flight. Finnigan had an already existing pipeline of retail outlets for his Jugglebugs, a set of juggler’s toys.

The pair journeyed to Brazil to find suitable manufacturers of the Volleybird.

“Scot knows I’ll go for a crazy idea, so I went down there with him,” Finnigan said.

They found two leading peteca manufacturers, one in Sao Paulo, the other in Belo Horizonte.

The toy is now carried in a variety of retail stores nationwide. The largest purchaser so far has been Eddie Bauer Inc., a Redmond, Wash.-based national sporting goods and clothing chain of 135 stores. The company has purchased 18,000 Volleybirds.

Karen Schweppe, merchandise planner for Eddie Bauer, said the toy “has been a pleasant surprise.”

“We bought a moderate quantity, and it blew out of the stores for us,” Schweppe said. “We thought that it would be a fun new item, but we thought it would be moderately successful. . . . But some stores were out of their initial shipment in a day.”

Locally, the Volleybirds are sold at a number of beach area stores.

Cindy Milot, assistant manager of Hamel’s Action Sports in Mission Beach, said the store has only carried the Volleybirds for two weeks, but they have sold better than Frisbees and other sports toys.

“It seems to be the newest fad,” Milot said. “It could be very promising.”