Are you sure that you want to delete this flower? To view a photo in more detail or edit captions for photos you added, click the photo to open the photo viewer. Edit Overview Section. In 1957, an Australian visiting California told them, quite casually, that in his home country, children twirled bamboo hoops around their waists in gym class. TheSlip N Slide, Hacky Sack, and several others were also third-party ideas. The company ended 1958 with losses of $10,000. The cause was Alzheimer's disease, his wife, Suzy, said. A giant promotional specimen accidentally dropped from a 23rd-floor hotel room window, rebounded 15 floors and destroyed a parked convertible as it fell again. Tiring of business, Mr. Melin persuaded Mr. Knerr to sell the company in 1982 to the Kransco Group Companies for $12 million. cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Use Escape keyboard button or the Close button to close the carousel. It became the biggest toy fad in modern history. But Melin and Knerr didnt seem wired for conventional products. Please contact Find a Grave at [emailprotected] if you need help resetting your password. Failed to delete memorial. Greatest toy invention in years! ad copy blared. Ed Sullivan (2 Both the Hula Hoop and Instant Fish sprang from Melins interest in other parts of the world. Before the elephant arrived, he sent a telegram posing as his partner: Am sending live animal home, please feed it and take care of it until I get home. But knock-off artists had smelled opportunity. This page was last edited on 12 December 2022, at 22:20. It gave us the opportunity to do it."[29]. TIME reporter Allie Townsend picks the 100 most influential toys from 1923 to the present. All Rights Reserved. The original Hula-Hoop girl is sitting in a caf wearing a leopard-lined jacket, gold-painted nails, and Revlon lipstick in a shade called Orange Flip. However, the Hula Hoop never faded away completely and still has its fans today. Arthur Melin | | The Guardian Wham-O's first incursion into the mainstream came in 1955, when it bought the idea for a plastic flying disk from a building inspector named Walter Frederick Morrison. Hula Hoop patented - History Arthur Spud Melin - Crunchbase Person Profile In 1957, they purchased the rights to Morrisons toy. COSTA MESA, Calif. Arthur "Spud" Melin, co-founder of the toy company that introduced the world to the Frisbee, Hula Hoop and other faddish gems of American Because of its enduring popularity, the Hula Hoop was inducted into Becoming a Find a Grave member is fast, easy and FREE. But they wanted to see what they could do with it.. By 1957, the company had sold several million of the disks.But nothing could compare to the whirlwind force of the Hula-Hoop, which Wham-O introduced the next year. The pair, who would remain lifelong pals and business partners, attended the University of Smith has 10 children, including a daughter who works as a film producer. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you manage. When lawsuits were brought over serious injuriesincluding one death and two broken necksthe company ceased production.. They were more of an old-school company. Within four months, 25 million hoops had been sold, according to Wham-O, and hooping was an integral part of American youth culture. He sold the design to Wham-O in 1957. Along with his wife, Melin is survived by five daughters, Linda, Sally, June, Carol and Della; one brother, Tom; and 11 grandchildren. Rather, he said, the name came from a comic strip of the era called Mr. Frisbie. We have set your language to Knerr once had a baby elephant delivered to Melins wife, Suzy, after Melin went on an African safari without him. In 1958, the founders of Wham-O toys, Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud" Melin, Vintage plastic Mr. Long story short, after much effort and rejection, Spud finally got financing for his Hula Hoop, and Wham-O went on to sell some 25 million hoops the first year, making Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print. However, his most famous offspring happens to work in the football industry. In 1982, Spud Melin and Knerr sold Wham-O to the Kransco Group for $12 million, but Spud Melin kept up his interest in gadgets - at one point, he patented a two-handed tennis racket with an adjustable handle. You have chosen this person to be their own family member. However, when the weather cooled and the kids went back to school, the fad was over, and Wham-O had millions of unsold hoops. The bosses explained that they patented the mechanical principle behind it, the ratio of waist to diameter: "Small hoops or big waists just won't work.". They did not know what to make of it until another friend from Australia showed them how to gyrate their hips, thus spinning the hoop. Water Wiggle (1962), a plastic-enclosed curved nozzle that, when powered by a garden hose, became airborne. Bookbinding! For years, college students, especially at Yale, had played a game of catch with pie tins (or in some versions of the story, lids of cookie jars) made by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Conn. Mr. Knerr said in an interview yesterday that the similarity of the name of Wham-O's disk to the name of the student game was a coincidence. In the height of the Cold War, when families were building backyard bunkers to live in following nuclear attack, Wham-O marketed Do-It-Yourself Fallout Shelters for $119. Thanks to a savvy marketing campaign, 25 million hoops were sold within a few months of the product's launch; the hula hoop craze was off and looping, with kids all over America spinning hoops around their hips and waists. There was a sense they had passed their heyday., Melin and Knerr were also faced with an unfortunate consequence of people trying to have a little too much fun: the Slip 'N Slide, intended for children, proved catastrophic to adults and teens who were too large to use it properly.

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