Frisbee's Fred Morrison, 1920 - 2010

Fred Morrison, inventor of the modern plastic flying disc died on Tuesday, at the age of 90. I had the privilege of interviewing Fred for my WHAM-O Super-Book a few years ago and he was full of great stories that had nothing to do with the toy he made famous. Here are a few:

Fred was driving behind Spud Melin and Rich Knerr, the founders of WHAM-O, as they drove to a Frisbee event in 1965, the year the WHAM-O Super Ball was introduced. “I’d never seen the damn things before and I didn’t know what they were,” Fred told me. “...All of the sudden here comes all these little black things bouncing all over hell, all over my car, all over the freeway. Here they’re throwing these mini Super Balls out of the back of their car down the freeway!”

In 1958, a year after Frisbee hit it big, WHAM-O licensed an ingenious idea from Fred — a hollow, plastic bowling ball that could be filled with a quart of water to give it realistic weight. "If you didn't fill the bowling ball all the way, it sort of gyrated when you rolled it," Fred recalled.

After the "Home Bowling Set," Fred came up with another use of liquid, this time frozen. This “machine” for making homemade popsicles was licensed to WHAM-O and released in 1962. My favorite line from this ad is "If it tastes good and it's wet... FREEZE IT!"

My favorite Frisbee story from Fred is how he and his wife would open the royalty checks that they received from WHAM-O. He told me they'd cut open the right-hand side of the envelope and slide the check out slowly, counting the zeros.

An estimated 200 million Frisbee brand discs have been sold since WHAM-O introduced them in 1957. It all started on a Thanksgiving day in 1937. That's when Fred, then a high school student, first tossed a metal popcorn can lid for fun. Later, he and his girlfriend sold metal cake pans for 25 cents on Santa Monica Beach.

After World War II, in which he survived being shot down and held as a POW, he returned home jobless. Thinking back to his carefree days of “pan handling” on California beaches, Fred sketched out an idea which eventually became the Flyin' Saucer, one of the first commercial, plastic flying discs. He sold it with the help of a partner named Warren Franscioni, who financed production in 1948. The idea proved to be ahead of its time and the partners went their separate ways in 1950 after sales of the disc slumped.

In 1955, with the UFO craze in full swing, Fred came up with a new design he dubbed the Pluto Platter. This was the disc that caught WHAM-O's eye, and in 1957, they licensed it from Fred. Not knowing what to call it, Spud and Rich covered all the bases by naming it the WHAM-O Frisbee Pluto Platter Flying Saucer.

The world has come to call it Frisbee. Thank you, Fred.

Photo of Fred Morrison courtesy of Phil Kennedy.