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50 years of Frisbee
Flying disc reaches half-century mark
By Steve Arney
sarney@pantagraph.com

Frisbee.com
It's the late 1930s and Fred Morrison is playing catch on the beach with his girlfriend Lu, using a cake pan. Someone offers them 25 cents for the item; it is worth a nickel.

"A light bulb goes off," said Phil Kennedy, Frisbee historian. He said they sold it, then bought a bunch more and played disc catch and sold discs on the beaches.

None of this makes the Morrisons the "inventors" of the flying disc, said Kennedy.

That title belongs to an unknown person in the ancient world -- the first person to pick up a flat, circular object and give it a fling.

Humankind seems wired to do this, said Kennedy. Over centuries, it's been done for fun. Sometimes, the objects have been used for weapons. Sometimes they were a little of both as the poorly conceived toy platters -- a metal paint can lid, for example -- took on recreational use with painful results for the catcher.

To Kennedy, the Frisbee story, starting with Morrison, is about bringing the idea to market.

He and Morrison collaborated on the book "Flat Flip Flies Straight (True Origins of the Frisbee)," released in 2006. The title comes from the instructions Lu created in 1955 for the back side of the Pluto Platter, precursor to the Frisbee.

"Play catch -- Invent Games

To Fly, Flip Away Backhanded

Flat Flip Flies Straight

Tilted Flip Curves -- Experiment!"

Invent games. Not that the world heeded Lu, specifically, but this notion has kept the plastic plate, 50 years later, from becoming an obsolete fad.

Wham-O discovered the Pluto Platter while Lu and Fred were demonstrating and selling at fairs in 1955 or 1956.

By then, the two were married, plastics had been developed and Fred had studied aerodynamics. He served as a pilot during World War II, and was a recreational plastic flying disc maker after the war.

In 1957, Wham-O and the Morrisons signed a contract giving manufacturing and sales rights to Wham-O. (The Morrisons retained royalties.)

The name Frisbee marked another discovery for Wham-O, not a creation.

According to Kennedy's history, a company sales representative working a territory in the East heard young people calling disc-catch frisbee-ing. Except, they probably were "frisbie-ing," named after Frisbie-brand pie tins which lent themselves to that human urge to toss flat, circular things.

Frisbee became the trademarked, official name of the Wham-O disc in 1959, and the company has fought to keep it from becoming a generic product name since.

Early on, Wham-O had visions far beyond the casual recreational use in yards, on beaches, among college students and among hippies, according to David Waisblum, Wham-O Inc.'s current product manager for Frisbee and Hacky Sack.

Designs and marketing in the 1960s presented a sporty image that didn't deter the casual user but invited serious sport, said Waisblum.

Two company executives, Dan "Stork" Roddick and "Steady Ed" Headrick, were pioneers in the disc sports arena.

Headrick invented disc golf and was a Wham-O vice president. Roddick was the company's sports promoter. They were champion competitors in Ultimate, a no-contact football-like disc game, and in disc golf. Headrick was so fanatical that after his death, by his request, his ashes were sprinkled into disc molds so that his ashes could be distributed in a special line of discs.

Their work, and that of others, combined with a product with lots of attributes, said Waisblum. He noted:

• It is multigenerational. A child can play. A senior can play. A senior can play with a grandchild. There's even a record kept for the farthest disc throw by a person 100 or older. (Toshi Fujimoto of Japan, 8.6 yards, 2005.)

• It lends itself to game inventions. Two other games are Freestyle, involving tricks and stylish performance, and Guts, involving high-speed flinging to catchers with the nerve to grab the speeding disc. You can play it with your dog or by throwing and catching it yourself. (And records are kept in both categories.)

• Discs are cheap. Frisbees cost from $6 to $18, depending on the model.

• Disc sport and recreation crosses genders, races and economic levels.

From a business end, there is brilliance as well, Waisblum continued.

Consider the golf course: Trees, streams, ponds -- the things that eat Frisbees.

The original Pluto Platter is so rare that collector Kennedy loaned one of his mint-condition Plutos to Wham-O to enable the company to mold and release a replica for its 50th anniversary collector edition, Kennedy said.

Consider the sport's nature: A typical disc golfer, said Waisblum, will carry 10 to 20 discs in a bag while golfing, using different discs depending on distance to the basket -- the golf target that, by its very metal makeup, can damage the disc. The golfer will have perhaps twice that number of discs at home, and the Ultimate player will keep perhaps five discs, Waisblum said.

A disc golfer himself, Waisblum said, "Competition is getting fierce out there."

But he also could have been referring to the business end.

Wham-O has tried to be in both worlds of the disc business -- positioning itself as a premium brand for recreational use in the Targets and Wal-Marts while trying to keep abreast of the best in the sporting goods stores.

Brands like Innova-Champion, Lightning Discs and Discraft are finding specialty niches among the sports crowd while knock-off brands have long worked for a piece of Frisbee's general merchandising market.

Wham-O is a private company, and it keeps its sales and profit information private for competitive reasons, said Waisblum.

But as disc sport goes, the flying things are still peaking after 50 years in retailing, he said. He cites this statistic to back his point: There were about 600 disc golf courses in the country in 1997; there are 1,850 today.



Frisbee's long flight



1948 -- Wham-O founded. Products over the years: Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Slingshot, Slip 'N Slide, Limbo Game, Super Ball, Super Balloon, Silly String, Trac-Ball, Hacky Sack.

1957 -- Designer Walter Frederick Morrison, who goes by Fred, signs rights to his Pluto Platter to Wham-O (while maintaining royalties).

1957 -- Wham-O first uses the name Frisbee on the packaging of the Pluto Platter.

1964 -- Wham-O vice president "Steady Ed" Headrick organizes the International Frisbee Association and introduces the Professional Model Frisbee disc to give the product a sporty image.

1968 -- High school students in Maplewood, N.J., formalize rules for a sport that becomes Ultimate Frisbee.

1974 -- Freestyle Frisbee, consisting of tricks and style points, becomes an official sport at the World Flying Disc Federation Tournament in Toronto.

1975 -- Headrick creates the game of Frisbee Golf by constructing a disc course in Pasadena, Calif., and organizing the Professional Disc Golf Association.

2001 -- Ultimate Frisbee is recognized at the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan as an official sport.



Record throws



As recorded by the World Flying Disc Federation (www.wfdf.org)

Outdoor distance

275 yards -- Christian Sandstrom, April 26, 2002, El Mirage, Calif.

Women's record

152.9 yards, Jennifer Griffin, June 28, 2005, San Diego, Calif.

Distance to canine catch

130.79 yards, Mark Molnar to Cheyenne-Ashley Whippet, Oct. 12, 1994, Pasadena, Calif.

Group marathon

1,198 hours, Prince George's Community College Club, June 1 to July 21, 1983, Largo, Maryland

Non-human distance

10.74 yards hurled by Alex the sea lion, St. Louis Zoo, Dec. 5, 1996

Maximum time aloft

16.72 seconds, Don Cain, May 26, 1984, Philadelphia

Self-caught flight

Score of 166.19 for 14.63 seconds, 85.72 meters (94.29 yards), Niclas Bergehamn, July 16, 1996, Uppsala, Sweden

Guts speed catch

74.03 mph, Tim Selinske catching Al Bonopane, Aug. 25, 1980, San Marino, Calif.

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