Referee whistles account only for 5 percent of Hudson's ? 6 million (US$10 million) of annual sales. Among its products are hunting whistles to replicate bird calls, a "Mardi Gras samba whistle" with musical tones and a 109-decibel whistle that's barely audible to humans because its 12,800-hertz sound is used to train killer whales. It also deters bats, Topman said.
Foxcroft, the only Canadian ever to referee in the NCAA US college basketball league, says he blew as hard as he could when a Yugoslav basketball player elbowed a US opponent during the 1976 Olympic men's gold-medal game. His pea was stuck and the crowd booed his apparent failure to notice the foul.
After the Olympics, he teamed with an industrial designer.
With banks unwilling to back his whistle startup, Foxcroft spent C$150,000 (US$97,4000) from his family's shipping business.
In 1988, he shipped 100,000 units. Now the company ships 40,000 whistles a day to 119 countries. The company, which also makes mouth guards, has annual sales of about C$44 million.
Neither FIFA, the international soccer federation that organizes the World Cup, nor national soccer federations recommend what whistle referees should use, nor keep records. Some referees, such as Denmark's World Cup referee Kim Nielsen, show up at matches with 10 whistles, including ACMEs and Fox 40s.
Nielsen says he chooses his whistle just before match time based on the acoustics of the stadium. The more enclosed the stadium, the higher the frequency of the crowd noise.
The whistle controversy won't blow over. In 1995, ACME began producing a pea-less referees whistle, the Tornado, which it claims is the loudest such whistle in the world at 125 decibels. A Fox 40 tops out at 115 decibels.
Foxcroft sued ACME for patent infringement. The two companies reached an out-of-court settlement stipulating that ACME's pea-less whistles be 50 percent larger, Foxcroft said.
Topman says he now sells as many Tornados as Thunderers.
"The trend is now toward pea-less, but these things go in and out of fashion," he said.
And even Fox is getting a piece of the pea action. Its metal Force Referee Whistle is the official whistle of the National Hockey League -- moisture-resistant sound ball and all. Because hockey games take place on ice, surrounded by glass, its referee whistles need what Foxcroft called "the warble of a pea."
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