Lessons Learned from the Fun Factory

Playthings magazine asked me to write a short article listing my insights into what made the WHAM-O toy company so successful. Here's my unedited list:

#5 Get the name right
In 1956, the “Pluto Platter Flying Saucer” was a plastic disc without an identity. It was dubbed “Boomerang Saucer” briefly, then “Flying Saucer” before being christened Frisbee. It would become one of the most recognizable trademarks in history. In 1958, WHAM-O almost released the “Whoopee Hoop,” and even printed packaging labels with “Let’s Make Whoopee!” emblazoned on them before settling on the name Hula Hoop. In 1960 they bought the rights to a toy called “Fun Gun” and renamed and re-released it as the classic, Air Blaster, a toy that could propel a blast of air nearly 20 feet. When asked why they changed the name, WHAM-O co-founder Rich Knerr said, “Well, one name said what it was and the other didn’t.”

#4 Machines can kill
At the height of the hoop craze in 1958, WHAM-O was making twenty thousand Hula Hoops a week. Then, without warning, the floodgates slammed shut. “It was born in January and dead as a doornail in October,” Rich Knerr said. “We got stuck with a lot of them. After Hula Hoop, when we’d get an idea for a product, we’d hire the production of it out. We didn’t want a whole bunch of money in machinery to build a product if we didn’t know it would sell.” Had it not been for Frisbee, which took off right as Hula Hoop came rattling to the ground, WHAM-O may have gone bankrupt under the weight of all that excess inventory and idle machinery.

#3 Do not bite the fan that feeds
On the underside of every early Frisbee disc were the words, “PLAY CATCH – INVENT GAMES.” Players did just that, creating the sports of Guts Frisbee followed by Frisbee Golf, Ultimate Frisbee, Canine Frisbee and more. The International Frisbee Association was formed in 1967 and had 115,000 members in thirty countries at its peak. Today these disc sports are called Guts, Disc Golf, Ultimate and Disc Dog. Where’s the Frisbee name? By squashing any unauthorized use of its Frisbee trademark and avoiding the sponsorship of disc events, WHAM-O irked many a Frisbee fan in the ’70s and early ’80s. This culminated in the disbanding of the International Frisbee Association in 1982. Today disc companies like Innova and Discraft dominate the very same sports that the WHAM-O Frisbee spawned.

#2 Be original
WHAM-O’s first product was a homemade slingshot introduced in 1948. Success spawned a line full of projectiles and sharp points. “We did throwing knives, blowguns, and crossbows because they were different,” WHAM-O co-founder Rich Knerr told me. “You couldn’t buy those things just anywhere.” Later WHAM-O became famous for its “never-before-seen” toys – a fantastic piece of plastic that appeared to “fly on invisible wires,” a twirling hoop that defied gravity, and a ball that bounced higher than any ball anyone had ever seen. WHAM-O toys were so low-tech (and so knocked-off); it’s easy to miss how original they were.

#1 Look outside
WHAM-O’s biggest hits were developed outside the company. Frisbee was licensed from Fred Morrison, Hula Hoop was brought to WHAM-O by Alex Tolmer, Slip ‘N Slide (Robert Carrier), Super Ball (Norm Stingley), Silly String (Leonard Fish), Hacky Sack (John Stalberger), and on and on. WHAM-O founders, Spud Melin and Rich Knerr didn’t care where the product came from as long as the product was fun.

And in the toy business, fun is the name of the game.