Fred Morrison launched a leisure lifestyle with his fantastic plastic flying saucer.
His contribution to global recreation gained air only after he dodged death by steering a steel missile in the skies over Europe in World War II.
Morrison, a Southern California beach boy, first called his spinning discs Flyin’ Cake Pans and then Whirlo-Way. It’s known globally today as the Frisbee.
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“It was an instant phenomenon,” Tristan Lin, brand director for Wham-O, told Fox News Digital.
“Before you knew it, every college kid in America was playing Frisbee.”
Walter Frederick Morrison, who invented the Frisbee, is shown promoting his Pluto Platters. They were the forerunner of the Frisbee. (Connecticut State Library/Public Domain)
Wham-O, based in California, popularized the hula-hoop, super ball and Morrison’s Frisbee, among other whimsical innovations.
The genius of the Frisbee “is its simplicity,” said Lin.
“It was an instant phenomenon.”
Morrison was actually inspired by the easy-as-pie act of slinging baking pans through the air, a common recreational activity before his Frisbee took flight.
“The Frisbee started off as nothing more than a container that carried pies,” reported the University of Southern California online engineering publication Illumin Magazine, which analyzed the physics of the flying disc.
Border collie Emma catches a Frisbee in the “Freestyle Flying Disc” competition during the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge at Huntington Beach, California, June 8, 2018. (MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
“It eventually became an immensely popular and internationally recognized toy.”
The Frisbee proved to be so much more than just a plastic plaything. It’s an icon of a confident, optimistic, victorious United States.
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“The Frisbee screams America to me,” said Wham-O’s Lin. “It screams patriotism. It’s a symbol of American culture and creativity and a laid-back, playful but competitive United States.”
Something motivated America’s war heroes to contribute happiness to America after the horror of war.
The Frisbee proved to be so much more than just a plastic plaything. It’s an icon of a confident, optimistic, victorious United States. (iStock)
Morrison’s story is hauntingly mirrored by another combat hero pilot: Fredric Arnold, the American who invented the folding beach chair.
Airborne kick the can
Walter Frederick Morrison was born on Jan. 23, 1920 in rural Richfield, Utah.
His father, Dr. Walter F. Morrison, moved his optometry practice and his family to Los Angeles when the future toy titan was just 11 years old.
It was the Great Depression and even the most ordinary objects presented playtime opportunities. The Frisbee traces its roots to an airborne version of kick the can.
Four young friends jump for a Frisbee in Lake Erie on July 28, 2015, in Cleveland, Ohio. (Angelo Merendino/Corbis via Getty Images)
“The Frisbee story starts in college,” writes the National Museum of Play, which inducted the plastic surf-and-sand flying disc into its Toy Hall of Fame in 1988.
“Late 19th-century students at Yale and other New England universities played catch with pie plates … made by the nearby Frisbie Baking Co. of Bridgeport, Connecticut. They yelled ‘Frisbie!’ to warn passersby away from the spinning discs.”
