Brunswick had the Danger Zone, Inferno & Mastermind.
Hammer had the Black Widow and the Vibe.
Roto-Grip had the Cell and the Nomad.
Storm had Hy-Road and the Virtual Gravity.
AMF had the Night Hawk.

Each of these balls was such a mainstay for that manufacturer, that many, many versions of each of these very famous series were manufactured. They rode the coattails of the original.

It seems like Ebonite's one "famous" ball was the Vortex 2, the basis for the Gamebreaker and Cyclone series. Now it's 15 years later; the Vortex 2 was introduced in 2000. They seem to be stuck with this as their sole legacy.
It almost appears as if this is the only item keeping Ebonite afloat these days.

I'm sure every Ebonite fan will claim several other balls are equally great; while that may be true, no other ball comes close in sales, which is the bottom line.

I know there are some very talented people still at Ebonite; why can't they hit that magic formula again? Is it just marketing or is there some other reason?

This is not a rant; it's more a statement of sadness, that a once great company has not been able to rise from the ashes, as has most other ball manufacturers. I wish I knew why. Except for a Cyclone, I have not found one Ebonite brand ball that was truly useful for me int he past 10 years or so.

Charles - do you feel Columbia or Track has a ball that meets this criteria?

Some cores are mediocre, some are good, few are great. Look at the Break/Eagle core. 11 balls in 8 years with that core, and that's not even counting the Black Ops coming up. All but 3 wrapped in S70 (Break Points and S75), varying core tweaks (higher rg, lower diff) and it just rolls well for most people.

Shoot, did I just talk myself into drilling a Break Down?

Some cores are mediocre, some are good, few are great. Look at the Break/Eagle core. 11 balls in 8 years with that core, and that's not even counting the Black Ops coming up. All but 3 wrapped in S70 (Break Points and S75), varying core tweaks (higher rg, lower diff) and it just rolls well for most people.

Shoot, did I just talk myself into drilling a Break Down?

I wasn't talking about a core or a cover, but the final entity - the ball.

Ebo had some good ones: mission, the one, total NV.  Each one of those lines had some big sellers within each too.  I think they need a marketing genius as much as they need help producing better equipment.

they may have been true previously
i have at least 300 games on 1 of my GB2 with surface touch ups here and there.
baked it once, it performs as well as new from what i am seeing

I think those issues are behind them IMO

Ebo had some good ones: mission, the one, total NV.  Each one of those lines had some big sellers within each too.  I think they need a marketing genius as much as they need help producing better equipment.

I agree that they, Mission, the One series, were good, but they produced nothing in comparison to the Vortex/V2/Gamebreaker balls. I think marketing, or lack thereof, may be one of the missing but vital keys. I am not sure as I am not a corporation.

When they bought C300 and Track they got an attitude that they were going to take things over.  They tried to force feed some changes to a few large accounts that didn't go as planed and had a much larger negative impact then they expected. They haven't recovered from that and it was over 5 years ago.

Storm has a similar attitude these days.  It will be interesting to see when the tide shifts again and they are looking back going WTF happened.