An interactive foam ball which used an RFID reader in the ball and tags worn by the players to identify the participants by color. In the main game mode it calls out the color of the next player it wants to be thrown to, and times how long it takes for that player to catch it. The window to throw the ball gets shorter with each toss, making the gameplay increasingly frantic. If the players take too long, or it is thrown to the wrong player, the round ends, and the number of throws the group managed to complete is announced.
This product was a collaboration among a number of designers. If memory serves, I came up with the concept of a ball that somehow knew who caught it, and one of my fellow designers had the insight that RFID technology might be the answer. We all quickly learned all we could about the technology, and built a working testable prototype. Testing it together resulted in several bruises, a broken conference room table and a hit product.
Cosmic Catch inspired a follow-up game, Cosmic Keepaway, and was re-released by Jakks Pacific in 2021 as Color Catch Countdown
