Talking football

Abstract

A talking, soft football for young children, which when caught by a player then emits an audible voice message or crowd roar sounds appropriate to the game of football. The football is formed by an elliptical casing of flexible plastic enclosing a core of compressible material. Nested in a cavity in the core is an electronic module, access to which is had by way of a longitudinal slit in the casing that is closable by a lacing so that the soft football looks like a regulation football. Housed in the module at one side thereof adjacent the inner surface of the casing are a miniature loudspeaker from which the voice messages and crowd roar sounds are emitted, and a piezoelectric sensor which generates a command signal only when the football is caught by a player and impacts on his hands. Also housed in the module are batteries and an integrated circuit chip powered thereby, the chip being normally quiescent and being activated by the command signal. Included in the chip is a solid-state data memory having digitally stored therein several different voice messages and crowd roar sounds, and readout means, which when the chip is activated then selects at random one of the messages or crowd roar sounds, and decodes and amplifies the selection to yield an audio signal which is applied to the loudspeaker and reproduced thereby.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.