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Hula Hoop. Slip n Slide. Frisbee. Super Ball. What do these names mean to you? To many, these are just the names of some fun toys from years gone by. But to others, these names all culminate into just one… WHAM-O! And in this episode of the Dandy Fun House, we’re going to tell their story, have a deeper look into some of their most iconic products and discover what’s on the horizon for this epic company! Bam-O Slam-O let’s dig into WHAM-O! And let’s step into the FUN HOUSE! 

Hello and welcome to the Dandy Fun House Video Show, Podcast and Blog! This is where we slam right into the very best in retro pop culture, toys and games and all the fun stuff. I’m your host Neil Dandy and in this episode, we’re going head first into the world of Wham-O! 

 

But first! I want to stick your head into one of these slammin’ Dandy Fun House t-shirts! 

Woven from the leftover strands of recycled superballs, you’re gonna look like a million bouncin’ bucks or no money back! They’ve got a front and a back because winter’s on the way and we very thoughtfully cut four very strategically – placed holes in em! That’s right! One to crawl your body into, one to stick your head out of and two to poke your arms through! How much would you pay for luxury like this? It really doesn’t matter because we’re not changing our price! Just head over to our Dandy Fun Shop located inside the Dandy Fun House website at dandyfunhouse.com and see for yourself! And if you enjoy this show on YouTube, we have a miniature Dandy Fun Shop set up there too! That’s the Dandy Fun Shop where we have Absurdity Amplified! 

OKAY! WHAM-O! Where do I even begin with an enigma like this? Wham-O is THE toy and sports product company responsible for such instantly-recognizable products such as Frisbee, Slip ‘N Slide, Hula Hoop, Hacky Sack, Super Ball, Boogie Board, Trac-Ball, Silly String and many, many more! You might think of Wham-O as a classic novelty company from the 70s and 80s but their history actually goes back farther than that. MUCH FARTHER!!!!!

The year is 1948 and two eager upstarts freshly graduated from the University of Southern California named Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin who were friends found themselves frustrated with their post-grad occupations and decided to team up and start of all things a business making extra-powerful slingshots out of Richard’s garage.

Why slingshots you ask? Both being falconry enthusiasts, they would use slingshots to shoot food up into the air for their birds.

They called their line of slingshots the WHAM-O Slingshot and it was made from ash wood. They promoted and sold the Wham-O Slingshot  by visiting various sports clubs and holding demonstrations. Both men were very skilled slingshot marksmen and their product quickly popular amongst these clubs for competitive target shooting and small game hunting. 

DANDY FUN FACT! The name Wham-O was derived from the sound of a slingshot hitting its target!

Knerr and Melin quickly outgrew the garage and rented their first proper business location on S. Marengo Avenue in Alhambra, California where they remained until 1955 when they once again found themselves in need of a location that could handle and even greater capacity of manufacturing. So they relocated to the neighboring town of San Gabriel, California where they would remain for the next 3+ decades.

With a greater capacity for manufacturing in place, they began looking to expand beyond the business of slingshot-making and came across the idea of re-branding the Australian bamboo exercise hoop, producing them from a type of plastic called Marlex and trademarking the name these hoops had been loosely called by since the 18th century “Hula Hoop.” And the rest is history.

Within 4 months of releasing the Hula Hoop onto the world it became literally the largest toy fad in history, catapulting Wham-O to 25 million units sold. Within 2 years, sales of the Hula Hoop would exceed 100 million units. Hula Hoop mania continued to rage through the end of 1959 and by the time the world stopped spinning, the 1950’s came to a conclusion with Wham-O netting a staggering $45 million (which would be around $500 million today). These two college friends who just a few years earlier were making slingshots out of a garage found themselves riding into the 60’s on a gravy train with biscuit freaking wheels!

Not ones to rest on their laurels, as the Hula Hoop fad was beginning to wane, Wham-O was looking for their next big thing and they found it in 1957 when they purchased the design of a plastic flying disc called the Pluto Platter from an inventor named Fred Morrison, quickly changed the name to Frisbee And once again, Wham-O had another hit on its hands!

ANOTHER DANDY FUN FACT! The name Frisbee was adopted by Wham-O after learning that this was the name students were using for the Pluto Platter on the east coast in a reference to pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Tin company which the Pluto Platter closely resembled in shape. 

ANOTHER ANOTHER DANDY FUN FACT! As the Hula Hoop fad waned and the Frisbee literally took off, Wham-O found itself with warehouses full of unsold Hula Hoops. So what did they do? They melted them down and made Frisbees! They were recycling before recycling was cool!

Wham-O also released some rather questionable products around this time which would probably never even be considered for production and marketing to kids today. We’re talking about such products as the Apache Throwing Tomahawk “An Ancient Indian Weapon For Killing Game.” The Borneo Hunting Blowgun “Kills Without Poison” and the Throwing Dagger “A Powerful, Silent Weapon that can split a 1” board from a distance of 30 feet!”

In 1961, Wham-O released the Slip ‘N’ Slide which was invented by an upholsterer. The Slip N Slide as we all know is a long sheet of plastic which gets lubricated by water from a garden hose and then you run, jump and slide onto it and get hurled into the patio furniture and bird baths.

Here in the South where I live, you actually haven’t lived until you’ve almost lost your life at a Summer party experiencing a redneck slip n slide which is basically a long sheet of industrial plastic, usually what they install as a moisture barrier underneath homes, run it down a hill, throw the hose on it and then a bunch of suicidal idiots take turns injuring themselves on it or they don’t take turns and just injure themselves enmasse. It’s really quite a spectacle. Almost as interesting as Cat-Fisting!

The Slip N Slide was indeed taken out of production once lawsuits started springing up over serious injuries including one death and two broken necks over people above the recommended age the product was intended for using it in very unsafe manners. Yes, idiots ruin everything!

As the 60’s further took hold Wham-O released yet another smash hit  in 1965 called Superball which was a high-bouncing ball created by a chemical engineer supposedly by accident from a hard elastomer polybutadiene alloy called Zectron. This elastomer alloy held a very interesting trait whereas it held a 0.92 coefficient of restitution when bounced on a hard surface. Basically it could bounce really, REALLY high! The Superball became wildly popular, sold 20 million units throughout the 60s. In fact, the Superball became so popular that the NFL renamed it’s championship game, the Super Bowl after the Wham-O Superball!

ANOTHER DANDY FUN FACT! A bowling ball-sized Wham-O Superball was once accidentally dropped from 23 stories high during a demonstration where after hitting the ground, it bounced back up an amazing 15 stories! That’s a lotta bounce! It unfortunately also landed on someone’s sportscar parked below. No word on who was made to pay the damages. 

Now while they had quite a few successes, as we all know, success is the result of a series of failures and boy did Wham-O have some failures! And none of them failed bigger than INSTANT FISH! It was the early 1960s and Wham-O founder Arthur “Spud” Melin was on an African Safari where he learned of a special fish that would lay it’s eggs in mud during the dry season and when the rains eventually came, the fish would hatch overnight. Arthur had the brilliant idea to turn this into a Wham-O product consisting of an aquarium tank with fish eggs and mud. The product flopped miserably and the only one ending up in the mud was Mr. Melin. And they never let him out again.

Another Whamtastic flop would be the EGG RAKE which was designed to help a person sift out small pieces of eggshell from a cracked egg. I can’t imagine why the fabulous egg rake didn’t rake off!

Just kidding. Wham-O’s marketing strategy was simple: Maintain a handful of basic, inexpensive products like the Frisbee, Super Ball and Hula Hoop while developing new products for trial runs. Retire the products as they wane in popularity. But since the products were simple and fairly inexpensive they could be carried almost anywhere from big fancy departments stores to small mom and pop shops. And this was a huge key to their success!

As the 70’s disco’d onto the scene, Wham-O stayed true to it’s core with such products as Silly String, Super Elastic Bubble Plastic, Magic WIndow and Trac-Ball which was a lot of fun. Trac-Ball was and still is a racket game where the players each have an oversized scoop-shaped racket with a plastic basket of sorts built into it and a trac with small teeth on it. As you use your racket to throw the ball, the track puts an excessive amount of spin on it which causes the ball to travel in a crazy curve. 

As Wham-O wound up in the 80’s, it released the Roller Racer and introduced Magic Sand to the world which is sand coated with a hydrophobic material which keeps water from being absorbed by it. But their biggest hit in the 80’s was undoubtedly a design they purchased from a duo of inventors in 1983 which took the world by storm and continues to be played by dirty hippies at music festivals worldwide. I’m of course referring to the HACKY SACK! For those of you who may have been living under a rock for the past several decades, I’ll quickly explain what a hacky sack is. It’s a small bean bag maybe a third larger than a golf ball in which the object is to keep aloft without the use of one’s hands. It’s easy to carry and fun to play with friends especially when you realize that you have unwittingly found yourself at a Grateful Dead tribute concert and need to kill some time while you wait for the ummm… ATMOSPHERE to dissipate before you drive home. 

In 1982, Wham-O was purchased by Kransco Group Companies and they largely just held the course with existing products until their acquisition by Mattel in 1994 which lasted 3 years until a group of independent investors purchased the brand from Mattel and Wham-O became independent once again!

Arthur “Spud” Melin

 

Richard Knerr

Sadly, in 2002: Founder Arthur “Spud” Melin passed away with his lifelong partner Richard Knerr following suit just a few years later in 2008. 

In 2009 Wham-O was sold to the Aguilar Group investment firm and since that time has passed through a few more ownerships of the boring corporate type and since the early 2000’s has largely just handled the manufacturing side of licensed products like Sea-Doo, various lawn games, an e-Bike called the Smacircle (very odd name),  several variations of the Slip ‘N’ Slide and also the iconic Boogie Board!

And their big 3 super hits from the golden age The Superball®, Frisbee®, Hula Hoop® have all been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame!

And there you have all you ever wanted to know about the toy company Wham-O! Tell me YOUR favorite Wham-O memories, old or new in the comments on whatever platform you happen to be enjoying the Dandy Fun House on. I’d love to know. 

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Alright, speaking of growing, I gotta get growing myself! While you wait for the next episode, feel free to browse our past ones at our website or any of the major socials. But most of all, don’t forget to come back real soon right here to the Dandy Fun House where everything is always FUN AND DANDY!

Neil Dandy is the creator of The Dandy Fun House and the alter-ego of Neil Smith, the Big Cheese at Neil Smith Entertainment, musician, Emcee, Paratransit Driver and Author. Aren’t you impressed?