JUNE 1994
" Silly Season"

Want to don giant boxing gloves and knock the (symbolic) bejesus out of a company adversary? Add 300 pounds of imaginary weight via rubber Sumo wrestler garb and bump soft tummies with a co-worker? Dive into an arena filled with 7,000 red balls-just for the fun of finding a single blue one? Then Total Rebound is the organization for you.

Perhaps no one has tapped into the intrinsic fun of corporate games better-and more successfully than this Napa, Califomia-based company, which provides interactive activities to meetings and special events. Their products include everything from the Velcro Wall inspired by David Letterman's famous stunt to Human Bowling (participants are strapped inside a huge plastic ball and rolled by others down an inflatable 40 foot lane to knock over six-foot pins.

Owner, John Wilkinson began the company five years ago with the country's first OSHA-approved bungeejumping site, one that gradually expanded to include some 50 games and activities, with new ones added to the roster every month or so. Some are specifically designed for the client, such as the boat-building contest created this spring for a shipping company. Wilkinson describes the full-day event: "Each team [18 in all, with 10 people per team] competed on six of our games for pieces of a blueprint that showed how the boat was assembled. After they had completed the blueprint, they had to build the boat-made of cardboard, styrofoam, and plastic-and then race the other teams on a lagoon." Teams that were the craftiest, says Wilkinson, ended up the winners. "They had to figure out which member should compete in which event. The biggest guy went into the Sumo wrestling suit, the most agile went up the rock-climbing wall, and so on." After the event, an emcee reiterated-in humorous terms-the team building benefits of the day.

While the games are often taken very seriously, the serious aspects are most often subsumed by fun "A huge piece of our business comes from the Silicon Valley," says Wilkinson "The employees there are young, and they don't want the typical canapes and-white-wine party. Wilkinson and crew have created their jolly havoc for Ringling Brothers Circus, Molson Breweries, Geena Davis's wedding, and a party thrown by producer-director George Lucas. The hottest new game? Wikinson nominates the Velcro Obstacle Couse, in which Velcro covered participants try to maneuver a 60 foot inflatable course ridded wah Velcro obstacles. " It's great for adults to play with their kids," he says, "and that's the point-people interacting with each other, and not just with the game."-M.A.

Contact Total Rebound at (800) 4-REBOUND