Legend has it the Beatles rubber ball drew inspiration from The Cyrkle’s hit “Red Rubber Ball” — a band discovered by Brian Epstein, with a name coined by John Lennon himself. Manufactured in the U.S. by Holland Hall Products, Inc., this inflatable ball turned any playground game of Four Square into a Fab Four occasion.

Pat Boone commissioned artist Leo Jansen’s oil-style portraits of the band — sourced from Peter Hall’s May 1963 photos of John and Paul — then built a nationwide contest around them, flying 30 winners to see the Beatles’ Las Vegas show on August 20, 1964. One of those winners, then-eighth-grader Chris Barnes, still remembers being greeted personally by Boone on the tarmac. By October 1964, Boone had sold 10 million of the portraits.