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> "There was not a single bouncy ball in any machine in America for a couple months. I felt so bad for the poor children," said Fuglsig.

I find it hard to believe that they really went around for months buying maybe 100 balls each from random dispensers until they had 250,000 - especially considering the design of the balls is mostly consistent in the end. Maybe a bit of fanciful storytelling?

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Yeah, it might also mean that the suppliers just didn't have balls to restock into those machines

Good point, I guess they probably did mean scour the country for suppliers, rather than ball machines! Even in context you could read it both ways:

> First, they had to scour the country to acquire the 250,000 bouncy balls needed to create the critical mass. “They bought every bouncy ball west of the Mississippi,” said Ranahan. “There was not a single bouncy ball in any machine in America for a couple months. I felt so bad for the poor children,” said Fuglsig.

This is probably a colorful way of saying they bought up a couple months' worth of inventory from Wham-O's western-division distributors.

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