Creative and Beautifull Marble Toys Design. Download For FREE

"A marble is a small spherical toy often made from glass, clay, steel, plastic or agate. These balls vary in size. Most

commonly, they are about 1 cm (1⁄2 in) in diameter, but they may range from less than 1 mm (1⁄30 in) to over 8 cm (3 in), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 30 cm (12 in) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of games called marbles. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors. In the North of England the objects and the game are called ""taws"", with larger taws being called bottle washers after the use of a marble in Codd-neck bottles, which were often collected for play.

In Australia, games were played with marbles of different sizes. The smallest and most common was about 15 mm (5⁄8 in) in diameter. The two larger, more valuable sizes were referred to as semi-bowlers and tom-bowlers, being about 20 mm (3⁄4 in) and 25 mm (1 in) in diameter respectively. They were used in much the same way as ordinary marbles, although sometimes they would be declared invalid because of the advantage of their larger mass and inertia. Owners of large marbles were also afraid to use them lest they be lost to another player as ""keepsies"". They were usually of the clear ""cat's eye"" or milk glass type, just bigger.

""Firing"" a marble meant that a player had to flick his/her marble from a stationary position of his hand. No part of the

hand firing the marble was permitted to be in front of the position where the marble had been resting on the ground. Using that hand, (s)he would flick or fire the marble from his/her hand, usually with the knuckle on the back of his/her hand resting on the ground, and usually using the thumb of that hand to do so. All shots of the game were conducted in this manner throughout except the very initial pitch towards the bunny hole that started the game.

Once a player was able to land his/her marble within the hole, (s)he would immediately then fire his marble at his opponents' marbles. However, if any player hit another player's marble before his/her own marble had been to 'visit' the bunny hole, the act would be referred to as ""a kiss""; the game would be over, and all or both players (in the case of two players only) would have to retreat back to the starting line to restart the game, without result. This, of course, could be quite annoying or frustrating if a player had already built up quite a few hits on another player's marble. So, most skilled players did not resort to this kind of tactic.

The overall aim was to hit a particular marble 3 times after getting into the hole, then you had to ""run away"", before the final contact shot was allowed to be played - which was called ""the kill"". Once a player made a kill on another marble, if the game was 'for keeps', (s)he would then get to keep the marble [bunny] (s)he had 'killed'. The format of playing this game was that each time you successfully hit another player's marble, you were to have another shot - even if it was not the marble you had originally intended to hit.

Of course, the ploy was to hit the particular opponent marble 3 times, and then 'run away' to the bunny hole, because once you rested the marble into the hole, you immediately had your shot again, thus leaving no opportunity at all for your opponent to retreat his/her marble before ""the Kill"" was made on it.

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