Generally, when you browse through the projects on Kickstarter or any other crowd-funding website, you'll see all kinds of products with a heavy slant towards making your life easier through technology. Essentially, many of the products are designed to help users be less active by using technology to do things for them. AryaBall is the opposite – it's an outdoor sports version of a nesting doll that lets you play soccer, American football, golf, baseball, and flying disc.
At first glance, AryaBall looks like a soccer ball and a baseball bat. However, where it gets interesting is when you take the soccer ball apart and find a football (American) tucked inside. When the user is done playing football, that cracks open to reveal what the creators call the "basegolf" ball, which is a baseball-sized ball with the dimples of a golf ball. A flying disc is also tucked inside the soccer portion.
The AryaBat comes into play for the basegolf part of the device. It features a golf club head that folds out of the top of the bat, which will be left tucked in when the user wants to play some baseball, and folded out for playing some basic golf.
Both the bat and ball are made from a dense and soft rubber material, which the creators promise to be both safe and durable for play on various softer surfaces like sand and grass.
To separate the ball, a user pushes the sides together and rotates. It sounds like the way one might open a child-proof pill container. Additionally, Babak Forutanpour, the creator of the AryaBall and AryaBat, promises that the seam between the two sides won't be visible when the ball is closed.
Based on user feedback, the final football will be made a little bigger than in the photos posted so far. It did look a tad on the small side, so that should definitely be a nice tweak to make the football experience more authentic.
The Kickstarter project is close to its US$35,000 goal, with 10 days left in its funding period as of this writing. Backers who only want an AryaBall can do so for a pledge of $38 while the early bird special lasts. After that, the pledge jumps to $45. For backers who want both a ball and a bat, a pledge of $55 is required. The team expects to deliver to backers in December of 2014.
The pitch video below provides more information and shows the toys in action.
Sources: AryaBall, Kickstarter
