Antenna balls

This page is about the real-world item. For the fictional characters, please see Antenna balls (fictional).

Antenna balls are a promotional item given away at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Designed to resemble Jack Box's head, they were first sold with the purchase of a Sourdough Jack burger in 1995.^[1] Over the years, there have been many variations to mark special occasions.

As a Jack in the Box product manager explained, "the antenna balls [gave] fans a fun token for their vehicle while giving the company a mobile billboard that could possibly be seen by thousands of people."^[1]

Jack in the Box claims over 32 million antenna balls have been sold or given away by the restaurant since their introduction.^[2]

History[]

Antenna balls were originally introduced in 1967 as a means to advertise Union 76 gasoline, and were popular until the fad died out in the early 1980s.^[1] They had a huge resurgence in 1995, when Jack in the Box introduced a line of antenna balls designed to resemble Jack Box's head.

Trivia[]

Sean Smith, a US diplomat killed during the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya,^[3] used an image of a Jack antenna ball as a message board avatar.^[4]