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Hacky Sack’s Unexpected Comeback Is Creating a Shortage—Buy These While You Still Can

Be the hero who shows up for the group with a hacky sack. Here’s where you can still find the good ones, shortage or no.

By Matt Jancer | Reviewed by Ysolt Usigan

May 28, 2026, 10:59am

We were stuck between two worlds in our junior year of high school. Not yet seniors who were allowed to drive off campus to lunch, but no longer confined to the cafeteria, we ate our lunch every day in the semi-covered courtyard rain or shine. There was basically no supervision over our 16-year-old selves. Confined freedom, but freedom nonetheless. After we’d scarf down our lunches, nearly every day someone would appear with a hacky sack and we’d kick the thing around to chat while we passed the time until our last periods of the day.

Dirtbag

Dirtbag Hacky Footbag (opens in a new window)

Available at Amazon

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This was in the early 2000s, slightly after the 1990s heyday of the hacky sack but still when it wasn’t that uncommon to see kids kicking them around as they wanted for the bus. Now Gen Z has discovered another relic from the Gen X ’90s. It’s the hacky sack, just as it’s discovered baggy-legged jeans and dumbphones and low-tech Camp Snap cameras. As NPR has reported, the sudden leap in popularity is causing hacky sack shortages. They may not be easy to find, but they’re not impossible to find.

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keep it simple

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Hand-Crocheted Hacky Sack (opens in a new window)

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Don’t make it hard choosing a hacky sack. Fewer panels on the hacky sack itself and more filling—usually, but not always, sand—makes it easier to perform tricks, whereas those with more panels kick straighter for passing, but the beauty of hacky sack was always that it was blissfully simple. It wasn’t equipment- and rules-heavy like street hockey or baseball, which we loved but was not a casual game to pick up anywhere and everywhere like hacky sack. Buy whatever you think looks good.

You’ll see hacky sacks referred to as footbags. That’s news to me. Hacky Sack also refers to a particular brand name footbag, with the generic name of the thing a footbag, but we’d always just called it a hacky sack. Footbag sounds like it would’ve been some kind of low-intensity insult. If you see the word footbag pop up during your search for a hacky sack, just know that it’s the same thing.