Wham-O Inc changed the name of the Pluto Platter to Frisbee 50 years ago yesterday, flinging a new word into US culture that still conjures images of carefree fun in the park and breezy days at the beach.
And to think Walter "Fred" Morrison, the inventor of the beloved disc, thought the new moniker would never fly.
"I thought Frisbee was a terrible name," Morrison, now 87, said. "I thought it was insane."
PHOTO: AP
Frisbee instead became insanely popular, making the name as synonymous with flying discs as Google is with searching the Internet and Kleenex is with tissue.
But Wham-O doesn't allow the Frisbee name to be thrown around indiscriminately. When the company sees Frisbee used to describe discs made by other manufacturers, lawyers dispatch legal notices seeking to protect the trademarked term.
Frisbee's name is a spin-off from a now-defunct Connecticut bakery, the Frisbie Pie Co. New England college students often tossed empty pie tins around for fun, a habit that led them to refer to the Pluto Platter as a "frisbie."
Wham-O co-founders Rich Knerr and Arthur Melin obtained the marketing rights to Morrison's invention in January 1957.
Less than six months later, Knerr made the fateful decision to embrace the nickname that the college kids had given the Pluto Platter. He evidently was unclear how on to spell frisbie, giving birth to a new word.
Morrison began experimenting with flying objects in his teens. He says he first tossed around a popcorn lid at a Thanksgiving gathering in 1937 and later graduated to cake pans.
When he first started to think of designing a flying disc, Morrison called it the "Whirlo-Way" in a tribute to the racehorse Whirlaway, which won the 1941 Triple Crown.
"All Fred was trying to do at the time was build a better flying cake pan," said Phil Kennedy, who teamed up with Morrison to write Flat Flip Flies Straight, a book detailing the Frisbee's history.
By the time Morrison finally scraped up enough money to develop a mold for his concept, there had been reports of a spacecraft crashing in Roswell, New Mexico, Morrison ended up calling his first line of discs "Flyin-Saucers." After upgrading his design, Morrison then dubbed the disc the Pluto Platter.
Wham-O has been trying to capitalize on the 50th anniversary by releasing collector's editions of the early models. The company says hundreds of millions of Frisbees have been sold, but won't be any more specific.
Meanwhile, Morrison, who lives in Richfield, Utah, is still collecting royalties off a name he did not really like.
"It just goes to show I am a bad judge of names," he said.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
RSS