Pizza Hut has had some of the best premium items in the history of fast food, and maybe one of their coolest offerings was their Street Balls they rolled out during March Madness for a few years in the early ’90s. Kinda like I’m doing with this post…trying to capitalize on the season. The street balls were non-standard-looking basketballs with custom prints that reflected what Pizza Hut thought the culture on the streets was like.
I had the one featured in the video above and used it all the time in my driveway shooting hoops by myself or playing a game of Around the World with my neighbor. I somehow felt like it made me a better player, but it probably just made me look like an even bigger doofus than I already did as a skinny, pasty-white white boy in the rural Appalachians trying to dribble between my legs on the way for a layup.
While I actually did play basketball in school and was a really good shot from downtown, I just didn’t look like a real ball player. What made matters worse was the fact that every one of us lanky kids who got one of these balls would bring them to practice trying to look cool. That doesn’t work when everybody brings one.
But I’ll say again, these street balls were a great piece of promotion by Pizza Hut, and anyone who was around back then surely remembers them.
my thoughts exactly Mick. I had a few of those balls as this was the height of my basketball fandom. I think I remember you picking up one of the recent mini basketballs they brought back a year or two ago – black and red “nobody outpizzas the hut”?
I remember getting one of these. Think it’s why my dad got me a hoop, but unfortunately, something about our carport wouldn’t support it, so it never got used.
’90s Pizza Hut premiums were ace. X-Men, Garfield (multiple times), Darkwing Duck, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles band, Darkwing Duck, this… man, I miss those days.