With Father's Day just around the corner, I thought I'd share one of my favorite tales from toyland. Here's the story of a designer Dad with a fun streak!
Robert Carrier came home from work one day in 1960 to see a most unusual sight. His 10-year-old son Mike and a friend had a hose running on their slick and painted Lakewood, California driveway, and both boys were sliding down it like otters.
Mike Carrier told me the tale when I interviewed him for my WHAM-O Super-Book. He said that he lived with his father and grandfather in 1961 and that his garage was carpeted so that he and his buddy could get a good running start. They’d take off in a sprint and hit this slick driveway and slide along until they almost reached the street...on their backs...on concrete! Mike's dad came home and said ‘Jeez, you guys are going to kill yourselves doing this,’ but Mike and his buddy were just a few kids, having a blast, oblivious to the danger.
Mike Carrier’s father just happened to be an upholsterer and to save his son from certain injury, he brought home a roll of Naugahyde and sewed together an ingenious contraption that used a garden hose to make a homemade water slide. The older Carrier looped one edge over a garden hose, sewed spaced stitches down the length of it and sewed the other end of it closed. When the water was turned on it filled the tube, and the resulting pressure forced the water out between the stitches, lubricating the slide’s surface. Viola! Instant Water slide. When Robert couldn’t get Mike and his friends off the slide and when more and more kids kept showing up to play, Robert knew he had a big idea.
Carrier contacted WHAM-O and in 1961 a deal was struck to bring the WHAM-O Slip ‘N Slide to the world. It was an immediate hit and remains today, 48 years later, one of WHAM-O’s most successful toys.
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