Sparkle & Squish

History

From iron balls to squishies

People have been rolling, squeezing and fiddling with things in their hands for hundreds of years. Here's how we got from Chinese iron balls to the slow-rising squishes on your desk.

  1. Long ago

    Walnuts in the hand

    The story goes that, before there were special balls for the job, people in China rolled walnuts around in their palms to keep their hands nimble.

  2. Ming dynasty, 1368–1644

    Baoding balls

    In the city of Baoding, in China's Hebei province, craftspeople made pairs of balls to roll around in one hand. The first ones were solid iron, so people simply called them "iron balls". Later versions were hollow, with a little chime inside that rings as they turn, and some were carved from jade, agate or marble. Baoding balls are still made in Baoding today, and people still use them to keep their fingers moving and their hands relaxed.

  3. 1937

    Squishy foam is invented

    German chemist Otto Bayer invented polyurethane, the material that would later become the soft, squeezable foam inside stress balls and squishies.

  4. Late 1900s

    The stress ball

    Squeezable foam stress balls became a familiar sight on office desks, often printed with company logos and handed out as gifts. Squeeze, let go, repeat.

  5. 2000s–2010s

    Kawaii squishies from Japan

    In Japan, squishies took the stress ball and made it cute. "Kawaii" means cute in Japanese, and kawaii squishies came shaped like buns, fruit, cakes and smiling animals, often scented to match. The best ones are slow-rising: squeeze them flat and watch them slowly puff back up.

  6. 2017 onwards

    The squishy craze goes global

    Squishies arrived in shops in the USA in spring 2017 and spread around the world, helped along by squish videos on YouTube and later TikTok. Since then we've had jumbo squishies, squishy dumplings, butter sticks and stretchy, dough-like squeeze toys.

  7. Today

    Sparkle & Squish

    Squishies are more popular than ever, and that's brought lots of unsafe copies too. In 2026, UK Trading Standards seized hundreds of thousands of them. That's why Sparkle & Squish, which started as a shop in a bedroom, checks the safety paperwork for every squish before we sell it. Read our story.

Where we found this