As a kid, I played countless games of Ping Pong in my uncle’s recreation room with my brothers and cousins.
Now I’ve got a kid, and we play Ping Pong too.
But in all those years, the paddles still look the same: green and brown.
Now Uberpong seeks to change that.
They want to make Ping Pong Uber Cool and what better way to do that than with the coolest paddles ever?
Uberpong creates Ping Pong paddles featuring the designs of 20 artists and graphic designers. Hipsters no long have to suffer from green paddle syndrome.
So how do you get your hands on one of these uber cool paddles? There’s a Kickstarter Program for that. David Lowe of Austin is spearheading the project.
The program launched on July 16 and so far has 65 contributors who have pledged $3,289. But Uberpong needs to reach its goal of $10,000 to fund the project. It has until August 15 to do that.
“Uberpong is an Origin of Cool project with the aim being to bring more color and style to the game of table tennis” according to its posting. Why do they call it table tennis?
“Think of table tennis being the traditional, formal English parlor game, Ping Pong being the more contemporary American version and Uberpong being the future of the sport.”
The paddle artists include British artist Hannah Adamaszek, American design firm The Bungaloo and Swedish graphic designer Viktor Hertz.
This project is also a way to help out the local arts community as the paddles feature designs from Austin artists Jay Bramhall, Nathan Brown, Charlie Chauvin, Sophie Roach and Dan Patton. The artists each receive 20 percent on every paddle of their design sold.
Ping Pong is a hot sport for high-tech startups. And it’s even an Olympic sport at the summer 2012 games.
Full Disclosure: I just backed this project on Kickstarter because I think it’s clever, cool and artistic.