Fun and games is all business

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Most of America's weekend-warrior athletes know the bitter truth about their personal skill levels: They're getting slower, weaker, and creakier every year and no new gizmo will reverse that.

Meanwhile, yesterday's sports innovations -- from graphite hockey sticks to computerized rowing machines -- gather dust in closets and garages.

Many become the secondhand stuff of classified ads, with sales pitches that reveal much about the American consumer: "Like new" and "Hardly used."

The brain trusts who conceive sports gear also know all too well that the purchasing public is retreating in droves from the harsh realities of participating in sports and fitness activities.

Holed up in front of their TVs and video games, comforting themselves with snack foods, the masses are becoming more massive. "One in nine US adults weighs more than 250 pounds, while one in six women is tipping the scales at 200 pounds or more," reports an industry report distributed at the annual convention of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association in Orlando last week, attended by 40,000 industry professionals, the nation's largest such event.

Yet even with sales in the $52-billion sporting goods market generally flat this millennium, due to the weak economy and stalled participation rates in athletics, companies are trotting out a vast array of new products to debut in 2005.

From practice baseballs engineered to curve when thrown without skill to battery-powered skateboards, the industry's theme can be summed up as this: "Look, these activities are easier than they seem. Buy this new stuff and get an edge with less effort."

What they're really trying to sell is hope, said Tim Sitek, a sports marketing consultant based in the St. Louis area. "No one walks into a sporting goods store and asks, 'What's old?' The consumer, deep down, wants to believe that some new product will make it easier to get in shape, throw a ball, or whatever."

Making games simpler to play is also among the industry's strategies. Consider the new "Junk Flag Football" from Little Kids Inc. in Providence. Priced at $7, this invention features a two-foot-long nylon ribbon attached via Velcro to the football.

To make a "tackle," defenders grab for that ribbon. "It's a big advance over the old belts that had flags hanging from either side," says Kirk Bozigian, the company's vice president of marketing. "Now you have less equipment to store after the game and less to lose."

Products that help keep adults and kids out of the emergency room are just as hot as those that promise improved performance, said Sitek, the industry consultant.

"Parents have enough concerns when their kids try several sports and don't like them. That's expensive enough," he said. "But if the child gets injured, that's even more expensive and it's scary too."

Taking the fear out of paintball, a game played with CO2-powered guns that fire hard paint-splattering balls at a speed of 300 feet per second, is seen as potentially lucrative by Franklin Sports Inc., located in Stoughton, Mass. Paintball play wars are largely the province of adults and older teens. Most commercial paintball-playing facilities, which feature targets, hiding places, and even leagues, have restrictions against pre-teenagers.

But Franklin's new Battle MAX line of low-impact guns fire soft plastic pellets to "replicate the paintball experience" and are aimed at lowering the acceptable playing age to millions of kids. A Franklin video lauds paintball as an "addictive game," but laments that so many potential players are excluded by its danger.

Expected to debut in September, the $99 Battle MAX guns have a hand-pump air mechanism that shoots their projectiles at just 50 feet per second. The foam bullets can be fired dry or dipped in paint. They still sting a little if they strike bare skin, and each gun comes with a protective mask.

To broaden the game's appeal to backyards and also imitate the commercial paintball places, Franklin is offering a line of targets, air-filled plastic castles, command posts, and pillboxes to create a variety of war zones.

Bill Best, who designed Battle MAX, said furnishing a typical backyard will cost about $200. In addition, Franklin will offer a line of gloves, pads, ammo harnesses, and color-coordinated team vests to identify opposing players.

Thus the beauty of this game, in the eyes of Best, is that the assortment of options -- and what one can spend on them -- is "almost unlimited."

But the supply of real live players in baseball is distinctly limited -- at least those young batters willing to lean over home plate while a Little League pitcher practices. For such moments, there's the new Bullpen Buddy from David Ross, an inventor and former college player.

To be offered at $60, Bullpen Buddy is an air-filled, five-feet-tall batter dressed in pinstripes. Buddy is also a switch hitter, by virtue of his detachable head.

Such wonderfully absurd items at the show underscore their industry's optimism that consumers will try almost anything if they haven't seen it before.

"The Kangoo Jumps are a revolutionary exercise product that I predict will come to lead its entire category," said Dennis Naville, president of Kangoo Health, a Switzerland-based company.

But he readily admits there isn't any measurable sales category for his kangaroo-style bouncing boots. Priced at $229 a pair, the footwear resemble ski boots with plastic treads controlled by Naville's patented spring, which allows wearers to bounce along with what he calls the "world's lowest impact" form of aerobic exercise.