Blue balls

March 18, 2025 12:42 PM

On a sunny July day in 2005, a frog jumped out of a rain gutter to see an unexpected sight: an avalanche of thousands of colorful bouncy balls careening down a San Francisco street. Although San Francisco has been the setting for plenty of cinematic chase scenes, there had never been any quite like this. Filmed as a British commercial for Sony Bravia TV sets, 250,000 bouncy balls were launched down San Francisco hills in one of the most surreal weeks in the city’s history, resulting in a short film that swept the advertising awards circuit and racked up a cumulative 5 million YouTube views. from 'It was chaos': The history of San Francisco's most unforgettable TV ad [SF Gate]
posted by chavenet (44 comments total)

I saw this a few months ago when I went down the rabbit hole of the best ads of all time. This one definitely stood out. I can’t imagine what hoops they had to jump through to get this done.
posted by ashbury at 1:02 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

It's a pretty ad, but with microplastics being the long-term result, I wonder if it or something like it could ever be made again.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:11 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

Be sure to check out the followup ad from Sony - Paint.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:14 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

Three thoughts:
1) Londoners have bigger balls.
2) A real world stunt like the San Francisco one beats any amount of CGI.
3) I wonder how many of the Sony balls are still unaccounted for?
posted by Paul Slade at 1:14 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

Would have been great to know what happened to all those balls later. They talk about trying to collect them, and it sounds like those efforts were (unsurprisingly) incomplete - but what did they do with all the balls they did collect, which I have to assume were a significant fraction of the original quarter million?
posted by nickmark at 1:15 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

A UK brand of breakfast beverage did their own version with fruits, so no plastic waste. But some trashed cars.
posted by funkaspuck at 1:16 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

> It's a pretty ad, but with microplastics being the long-term result, I wonder if it or something like it could ever be made again.

We're moving in the direction of less regulation, not more....
posted by constraint at 1:30 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

Even though the post mentioned a frog I literally gasped when that guy jumped out... just beautiful. (although it probably wasn't a jump for joy)
posted by pjenks at 2:00 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

I was living in SF at this time and I remember this! Not as great as Batkid but still pretty good.
posted by cali at 2:03 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

That was really pretty but all I could think the whole time was: “Drains To Bay”
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 2:09 PM on March 18 [8 favorites]

As noted in the article, the music is Jose Gonzalez' charming cover of The Knife's Heartbeats. By a pleasing coincidence, the video for the original briefly features a number of multicoloured spheres ...
posted by deeker at 2:15 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

The frog and the trash can falling over were so out of place, it took away from the awesomeness of the scenes of the balls organically moving with gravity and wind. Props to the director and editor though, the shots were gorgeous.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 2:32 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

One of the problems with this ad is you’re trying to sell me a tv based on color unlike any other, but I’m not watching it on your tv, I’m watching it on mine, so it appears as if the color is identical to mine.
posted by dobbs at 2:48 PM on March 18 [7 favorites]

It's a pretty ad, but with microplastics being the long-term result, I wonder if it or something like it could ever be made again.

Of which we each all have a teaspoonful of such in our brains as it is. I wonder, too.
posted by y2karl at 3:05 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

I recall seeing the original, so i was surprised to read that ad never aired in the US. Must have been from winning the awards. Also, i lived in the bay area at the time, so there was probably local tv coverage.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:13 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

I guess I was the only one watching and thinking "What an asshole move."

I wonder if they actually paid to clean up all the mess they made with that, and the dog taking shelter from the cascade of balls did not strike me as cute.

At the end, when I realized it was a commercial for a TV set...
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 3:36 PM on March 18 [7 favorites]

Yeah, you couldn't make this ad again today, word is these balls were real racist.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 3:37 PM on March 18 [5 favorites]

Yeah, you couldn't make this ad again today, word is these balls were real racist.

i heard the second AD was both weird and a little gross in some unspecified way (shakes head mournfully)
posted by Sebmojo at 3:44 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

I guess I was the only one watching and thinking "What an asshole move."

Not the only one. It is intensely weird when capitalism, I guess, makes a bunch of people not bat an eye at something that phrased a different way sounds totally bonkers:

"We want to dump a quarter-million tiny pieces of rubberized plastic all over part of your city and do a half-assed job of containing the mess and/or cleaning it up in service of our goal: to sell televisions."

Like, they claim they spent $74k on window replacements. If my elected officials ran on a platform of one day coming to my house and breaking a few windows but guaranteeing they'd replace them, too, I'd look at them like they were out of their damn minds.
posted by axiom at 3:46 PM on March 18 [10 favorites]

I have a bag of those type of balls somewhere in the "sort this after the move" pile/basement, have always wanted to do something like this. Except for the jerk plastics environment thing, so I'll just contaminate my immediate space and enjoy the weirdness by myself. No frogs shall suffer, and I shall enjoy bouncy bouncy mayhem. It's kind of a shame, in that the best surfaces to bounce the balls on get them all mucky, some are quite pretty little worlds unto themselves.
posted by winesong at 3:54 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

I think I remember this being huge on boingboing, which I’m reasonably certain I read in 2005. If you’re not in the area for the original run of the advert you might have seen it via that website.

Also, at the time, releasing a bunch of tiny plastic balls was not considered a dick move, because most 2005 people didn’t know microplastics were a thing.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:56 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

Of which we each all have a teaspoonful of such in our brains as it is. I wonder, too.

This was debunked. I’ll admit it makes a hell of a headline though.

Which is how I feel about that ad too. It’s amazing, and as other have pointed out, better because it’s real and not CG. I’ve always been a sucker for a superball and this was always a satisfyingly maximalist application. Does the ad industry suck ass for existing? Sure. But I’d rather this than AI sloptrough shite or blue liquid on a tampon, handwringing be damned.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:12 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

I think I remember this being huge on boingboing

Yes. Yes, it is.




(Also, Dave Letterman did it first.)
posted by aws17576 at 4:22 PM on March 18 [3 favorites]

This was debunked.

From your link:

“These images from ATR-FTIR [an analytical chemistry method] in the supplement were assembled without enough attention to detail,” Campen, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico, told The Transmitter in an email. “We have the correct images and will submit shortly. The mistake is purely clerical and in no way alters the conclusions of our manuscript.”

posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:55 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

How is this 20 years old? Like, 2005 was last week, wasn't it?
posted by Brodiggitty at 5:11 PM on March 18 [4 favorites]

> Also, at the time, releasing a bunch of tiny plastic balls was not considered a dick move, because most 2005 people didn’t know microplastics were a thing

Being mad about companies littering was absolutely a thing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:18 PM on March 18 [3 favorites]

I thought it was a fun idea.
posted by julianeon at 5:41 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

Pleasing video, but adding the balls to the scenes using CGI would have been just fine.
posted by Fizzy Kimchi at 5:46 PM on March 18 [3 favorites]

It's kinda cool, but I too mostly just wondered how many windows were broken, whether this caused any car accidents, etc. I guess I'm not much fun at parties. Sorry, Sony!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:31 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

at the time, releasing a bunch of tiny plastic balls was not considered a dick move, because most 2005 people didn’t know microplastics were a thing.

It's impractical to clean up that many small things released into a neighborhood, so regardless of microplastics, I'm sure many locals were less than thrilled with the aftereffects.
posted by Candleman at 6:33 PM on March 18 [2 favorites]

Very pretty balls. Nice music. Amusing frog jump. The whole thing would have been better if the length had been cut 50%. I guess I have to be on the side of the buzzkills.

Yeah, it's neat in a way, but what a mess and a waste of money. I'm in the line that most advertising is a waste of money, so there's that. I guess it did employee various people, but so would a CGI production.

... I'm sure many locals were less than thrilled with the aftereffects.

Yes, it's interesting that there were no interviews or comments from people less than thrilled with the aftereffects, as well as the prequel and during the actual shoot. I think I'd be a bit torqued if some deep pockets came in and paid to shut down streets in my town for days while making a lot of noise and mess they eventually didn't adequately clean up.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:28 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

As the article says, people liked it and all the residents agreed to it. It was fun! San Francisco has a lot of film and TV shoots and a lot of festivals and weird events like the annual Valentine’s Day pillow fight, etc. and they all require clean up. Do we get mad about glitter on the sidewalk during Pride? No, it’s all in good fun and the cost of clean up is already in the budget.
posted by cali at 7:42 PM on March 18 [7 favorites]

I remember that clip, but only because the video was at the forefront of H.264 rollout and I have vivid memories of fighting one of the worst turds of software ever made (QuickTime) to try to watch it at a janky, CPU-overloaded, framerate.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:44 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

Now I want a bunch of brightly colored bouncy balls.

I have no use for such now, but I was that kid that wanted to play catch with the wall, and now I want to again. Yet the noise would drive me batshit.

So I have become the stern parent to my inner child, and said no.

I still want them.
posted by Vigilant at 7:46 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

I wonder if that person ever found their cat?
posted by tavella at 8:43 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

(though I suppose it might just have been set decoration)
posted by tavella at 8:47 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

I wish I could say that I was there. But I missed it with a few months.
posted by Rabarberofficer at 9:18 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

See also these previous mentions of this on Metafilter, including the director's next work and Sony's next ad in Glasgow.
posted by intermod at 10:37 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

Another SFGate writeup: The Fillmore Street Ski Jump
posted by rubatan at 3:40 AM on March 19 [2 favorites]

2005 San Francisco? I'm imagining Monk looking out his window and seeing that.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 4:50 AM on March 19 [2 favorites]

Bizarrely enough, I was also in San Francisco in this day. I still have some of the balls (giggle).

At the time I was living in Washington, DC. I Was in grad school, broke and miserable. My friend and I flew to Berkeley, on a whim, to see her uncle's family and then drive the Pacific Coast Highway to visit one of our friends who'd ditched grad school and moved to San Diego. Neither of us had been to California before. I was 24.

Friends, it was a life altering trip. The time in Berkeley was brief and I spent most of a week in San Francisco, sleeping in various couches in the Mission. I had boba tea for the first time. I went to a lot of gay bars. The weather and geographic beauty and incredibly potent weed *floored me.*

One of those couches belonged to a creative type who was working on this commercial in some way. It was a bananas addition to a bananas journey. We left the same day on our drive to San Diego. Again, jaws were on the floor the entire time.

I ended that trip saying, with conviction, I had no idea that coastal California was so truly like its reputation. Better, even. I would love there some day.

It took me a few years, but I moved to California in August 2008. It is surreal to look back on that process, because the entirety of my California experience is now behind me. I moved out of the US a few years ago. My CA drivers license expired in 2022, and with it my last tangible connection to my old San Francisco address.

This commercial comes up in my memories from time to time. It has a dreamy symbolism to it in my recollections. Each memory, each detail, in those 15ish years... a brightly colored balls careening and bouncing down sun-drenched hills in slow motion before settling into the drains and gutters and gardens and the bay, still and spent but no less real for the sedimentary detritus of life now piled over them.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 7:07 AM on March 19 [17 favorites]

After watching the superball ad, Youtube suggested this stop motion Sony Bravia ad, which is also delightful.
posted by tavella at 9:23 PM on March 19

“These images from ATR-FTIR [an analytical chemistry method] in the supplement were assembled without enough attention to detail,” Campen, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico, told The Transmitter in an email. “We have the correct images and will submit shortly. The mistake is purely clerical and in no way alters the conclusions of our manuscript.”

I'm not quite clear on the point, as that's not how debunking works? You don't rely on the debunkee. The rest of the article makes quite clear the challenges and inadequacies of the study versus the shock-outrage attention-grabbing headlines that followed.

Anyway here are more rebuttals to the claim that our brains are full of cutlery-sized amounts of microplastics, e.g.

“Overall, the work is interesting, but the low sample numbers and potential analytical issues mean that care should be taken when interpreting the results. While it is not impossible that there are microplastics in the brains of some people, this study does not prove that this occurs, and, as the authors themselves note, there is as yet no strong evidence of any health effects.”

/derail

My main point still stands: this is a great ad!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 6:31 AM on March 20

Miles Davis makes a good soundtrack for this video.
posted by stbalbach at 6:40 PM on March 20