Topic: Tornado white ball

[Old Meister]

I see in the foosball.com store that they offer a white Tornado ball originally meant for the black light table. Has anyone played with it and how does it compare to the pink and the new 5 hr tumbled tomato balls?

[foozkillah]

We play with it every Thursday at one of our buddies' houses.  He purchased several different balls and the "day-glo" apple and cobalt men, etc...

The white ball, heavier and seeming to have a delayed reaction, getting spun, rolled, or brushed much more slowly at the start but then able to pick up more speed and inertia as it plays.  We mix up the balls with the old Tornado 08's, the different colored balls, and the new Tornado 09's.  Sometimes very frustrating, but also often so so hilarious.

The new darker red Tornado 09 balls are closer (heavier) but slightly grippier.  I played for years with the final browntop and later Tournament Soccer ball with the TS brand on it.  It seemed the closest in characteristics, weight, and feel, to the white Tornado ball.  I loved that old TS ball..clean or used or superdirty... Combined with the gray and dark TS browntop robotmen's rounded and softer feet, it was allmost as easy to "save" or "snag" the ball with the lip of the player's foot as the new darkred09's, right at the edge of control. (Maximum angle of the player foot)

At my closest venue, Lost Weekend in WPB, FL, I don't mind that the nimrods who replace the balls as they're lost in the bar or taken by duffers, have replaced 3 of the balls with those gigantic "REDHOTS", slightly heavier and dark red but shiny and smooth, with a little give.  They were the best practice balls for passing and pin shooting (frontpin or rollover) I ever had.  Most of the other players positively hated and despised these, trying to play with the regular balls when they were picking the next balls.

You could have a perfect wall click or brush pass, and then the delayed spin on the REDHOT would pick up and slip through on the wall.  You could have a perfect stick or grab with a pin, but the slightest relaxation of grip before it stopped spinning, and it would just keep rolling.  They were very dangerous when there was a goalkeeper banker, too, because it went into pinball mode so fast, with the spin really making it hard to stop or control.  The weight distribution and smoothness of the surface really wreaks havoc on many Tornado players.  I tried to practice and choose them as often as possible, which makes playing with the similar weighted new Tornado darkreds very familiar, only much more easily controlled because of the grippiness allowing one to neutralize or bludgeon the spin to stop.