Hula Hoops: The Fun Way To Keep Fit

The toymaker who invented the Hula Hoop and Frisbee has died.

Richard “Rich” Knerr and his partner Arthur “Spud” Melin co-founded the Wham-O company which specialised in fun products like Silly String and the Super Ball.

Knerr, who retired when he and Melin sold Wham-O in 1982, died this week at the age of 82 after suffering a stroke at his home in California. Melin, his partner and lifelong friend, died in 2002.

“The company motto was ‘Our Business is Fun,’ and that really describes both Dad and Spud,” Mr Knerr’s son Chuck said. “They were two boys who just loved to have fun.”

In 1958 they began selling round, plastic hoops at 98 cents apiece. People snapped them up by the millions, as seemingly everyone attempted to spin the things around their waists, hips, necks or knees. Just as quickly, however, the fad ended.

“By the time September rolled around you couldn’t give them away because every household in America had two and they lasted forever,” Chuck Knerr recalled his father telling him.

Soon afterwards the Frisbee, which had been introduced the year before, began to catch on and not just with people. Dogs loved to play with it too.

Because dogs tended to chew up Frisbees and people tended to lose them, they proved a much more lucrative product for Wham-O than Hula Hoops had.

Knerr and Melin met by chance as teenagers outside a cinema. They went into business together because Melin raised falcons and they used home-made catapults to fire meatballs at young birds to teach them to dive for prey.

Their catapults proved so popular that their barber suggested they place an ad in a magazine and start selling them by mail order.

Source: Press association.