Founded in , and inheriting its name from the sound that its flagship product, the Wham-O slingshot, made when connecting with its target, Wham-O, Inc.
Led by a diverse group of multi-talented entrepreneurs, Wham-O, Inc. Wham-O, Inc. Wham-O brought out the Frisbee flying disc in , and in introduced the Hula Hoop, which became one of the world's most popular toys. Wham-O continues to hold the leading market share in flying discs, and produces other classic toys such as the Superball.
The company makes more than 70 products, mostly toys designed for active, outdoor play. Wham-O manufactures a complete line of snow toys including sleds and saucers, and water toys including floating tubes, the Slip 'n Slide, and water blasters. The company makes other outdoor games such as bumper golf and croquet golf, and some tabletop action games such as Pinball Soccer. The company was owned by giant toy firm Mattel in the s, and in relaunched under a private management group.
In the s the company has been growing quickly and acquiring a variety of smaller manufacturers. While attending the University of Southern California, the pair searched for some product they could easily sell through a small home business.
The company name came from one of their first products, a slingshot. Melin and Knerr were fans of hunting with falcons, and they used a homemade wooden slingshot to fling bits of meat up to the birds.
The two friends bought a saw from Sears on the installment plan and began making slingshots in a garage. The company had a variety of early products, including blowguns and tomahawks. Melin and Knerr were always on the lookout for exotic new toys, and they hit it big twice in a row in the mids. First came the Frisbee. The founding mythology of the Frisbee is contradictory. One prevailing story is that students at Yale threw pie tins from the Frisbie Baking Company for fun, as far back as the s.
The California version is that kids at the beach made a sport of whirling plastic coffee can lids, or that Hollywood cameramen did the same with the lids of film cans. In a California carpenter, Fred Morrison, began making plastic throwing discs, which he called Pluto Platters, and selling them on the beach and at local fairs. Morrison patented the Pluto Platter in , and then sold the rights to Wham-O. Wham-O brought out the plastic Pluto Platter in , and retailed it for less than a dollar.
The company hired college students to hawk the Platters when it could not get distribution in regular stores. The Platters became all the rage at college campuses. Within the year, Wham-O had sold a million discs. In Wham-O enhanced the design of the disc and renamed it Frisbee. Richard Knerr claimed in an interview with the New York Times July 1, that he had named the product after a cartoon character, Mr.
Frisbee, and the similarity to the Frisbie Baking Co. Whatever its origin, the name Frisbee stuck, and became the generic term for plastic flying discs long after other companies began putting out their own brands. The Frisbee proved an enduring favorite, and eventually Wham-O did much to market and promote the toy, creating Frisbee sports and then sanctioning national competitions.
But this did not come until the s. Wham-O was kept very busy the year the renamed Frisbee came out, because the company debuted one of the hottest toys ever, the Hula Hoop. Knerr and Melin were always searching for offbeat toys, so an Australian friend introduced them to a bamboo ring kids in that country used in exercise classes. Knerr and Melin were first baffled by the hoop until they figured out that it was meant for twirling around the waist.
Wham-O began making the hoops out of plastic, and introduced them to the market in the spring of The Hula Hoop became a sudden craze, as children in southern California learned the balanced motion that kept the Hula Hoop swinging. The modern Hula Hoop was inspired by bamboo exercise rings that children in Australia were playing with. Wham-O also marketed very real crossbows, machetes, boomerangs and throwing knives.
The band Monster Magnet is named after a Wham-O toy from the s. By early November , things were looking dismal for the Central Charles A. Lindbergh, a national hero since his nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Lend-Lease policy-and suggests that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Hitler.
Lindbergh was born in in Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Cold War. Westward Expansion. Sign Up. Three years later a group of investors bought Wham-O and Mattel's sports division to create the private company of Wham-O, Inc.
Michael Cookson, the founder of Aviva, became Wham-O's president. After 50 years of manufacturing and selling largely spring and summer outdoor products, Wham-O began to expand into the winter sports with a line of sleds, snow saucers, and Snowboogies, which were foam boards built like water bodyboards.
The next year they acquired Riva Sports, Inc. Also in , they acquired Rocky Mountain, Inc. Earlier, in , Wham-O acquired Yes! Entertainment's girls' toy line, which included the Mrs. In the early s, they also re-released their classic toys and about 30 new Frisbee designs.
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