All Episodes

February 28, 2018 41 mins

From Hula Hoops to Frisbees, Superballs to Slip-n-Slides, Wham-O has put smiles on generations of American kids. But how did the little toy company that could get its start? (Spoiler: a meat-pellet shooter for your pet falcon!) And what are some of their greatest duds? (Spoiler 2: Instant fish!) Join Will and Gabe as they romp through the history of WHAM-O.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, Mango, what's that will? I'll come on, Gabe,
even when working on your Mango impression for what a
week now, knowing he's going on vacation, I think we're
just gonna have to be honest here and admit that
this is you. All right, You're right, I should just
be myself. I guess. All right, Well, we'll explain where
Mango is in a minute, but let's get back to it.
Guess what, Gabe, what's that will? Are you any good
at frisbee? Uh? I mean, I don't know. I guess

(00:22):
I'm decent. Well, it's something I thought I was pretty
good at until I was suddenly around people who were
really good at it. Now. You know, we didn't have
anything like Ultimate Frisbee leagues growing up in Alabama, and
frisbee was mainly just something you threw at the beach.
But in one of our first weekends on campus in college,
there was a field day for students, you know, to
get to know each other, and the Ultimate Frisbee team

(00:44):
was there, just demonstrating and recruiting people to sign up.
And I remember watching them and being amazed at how
good they were at this whole thing. You know, doing
that whole like forward risk flicking throw with such ease.
It was something I honestly had never really even tried before.
I just thought there was like this one accepted and
universal way to throw a frisbee, you know, the backhanded

(01:05):
way that most people throw. And it was in this
moment I realized, I know nothing. You know, like, this
is what college is for. Right Yeah, that alone seems
to justify the tuition bills right well, And it wasn't
the only thing that I learned that day. What else
you learn? Well, there was that hour of vigorous slip
and sliding, and I learned that that will leave you
nearly incapable of walking for a couple of days because

(01:27):
of the soreness. But the thing I didn't learn until
recently is that both of those life lessons wouldn't have
been possible without the tiny toy company Wammo. It really
is amazing how much the marketing genius of two people
had such an incredible influence on the industry and the
lives of children across America. Of course, so that's what
we're talking about today. Let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners,

(02:10):
Welcome to Part Time Genius I'm Will Pearson, and for
the first time ever, I am not joined by my
good friend Manga Ticketer. Instead, I am in luck because
we have our pal Gabe Loluesier on the line with
me today. Yeah, we're we're really an uncharted territory on
this one, but we'll see how it goes. Yeah. Well, well,
thankfully on the other side of the soundproof glass, I
have one bit of constancy that I can depend on

(02:33):
in this ever changing world, and that's our friend and
producer Tristan McNeil. Now Man goes just on vacation, so
don't worry listeners, he's off for a few days with
his family. We're happy that he's enjoying his vacation. It'll
be good to have him back. But Gabe, it's nice
to have you joining me today. Thank you. I'm happy
to be here. Yeah, now for today's show. Because we
knew Gabe would be sitting in, we wanted to find

(02:53):
a topic that really spoke to him, and and because
he's an avid toy collector himself, we decided to go
ahead and make an episode all about the Wammo toy Company. Now,
most listeners are probably familiar with at least a few
of Wammo's products, and you've got the Hula Hoop and
the Slip and Slide, the super Bowl, and of course
the Frisbee. So today we'll have some fun exploring the

(03:14):
history of these famous toys, and we'll also try to
get a sense of how toys that started as disposable
novelties became these time tested icons of playtime. For example,
I don't know if you knew this or not, Gay,
but there's actually a National Toy Hall of Fame and
WAMO has not one, but two of its toys inducted
at this point, and that's the frisbee and the Hula hoop. Yeah,

(03:35):
that's super impressive. And actually I did know that, but
only because the Hall of Fame has it's been something
of a sore point for me for a few years now.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a really cool thing.
The Toy Hall of Fame was established by the Strong
National Museum of Play in New York, and it was
something they started in two thousand eight. A is just
a way to recognize, you know, classic toys that have

(03:57):
inspired decades of creative play at this point, all right,
so I'm a little confused by this, So what's your
beef with the Toy Hall of Fame? Then? Okay, well,
I admit I'm a little biased on this one. But
every year transformer toys make it to the final round
of voting, and every year the committee passes them up.
And meanwhile, you know, kind of generic stuff like the

(04:19):
cardboard box and blankets, they get inducted with ease. And
I mean last year, for example, transformers again made it
all the way to the final round and then it
got beat out by paper planes. Paper planes will wait,
but you were saying, you said cardboard box and blankets,
you do you mean literally, just like blankets have been
inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame. Yeah, I guess

(04:41):
it's like a pretty loose term. You know, toys, they're
a little loose with what they'll include with it. But
you know, everybody plays with a empty cardboard box or
a blanket at some point, so I guess they count.
I don't know. That may make sense because paper planes
go back to ancient China, I think, and I don't know,
it feel like maybe we shouldn't steal a spot from that.
What do you think? Yeah, yeah, no, that's a fair point.

(05:02):
And you know, respect your elders and all that toy elders,
and really, you know, if there is one thing that
all sixty five of the current toy inductees have in common,
it's that kind of staying power that you're talking about.
I mean, these things have been around for you know,
a long time, paper planes, blankets, which just makes it
extra impressive to me that a couple novelty toys from
what began is this tiny regional company have already made

(05:25):
the cut. I mean, if you look at the list,
we almost really a stand out in that regard. I mean,
there are plenty of generic toys that can't really be
ascribed to a single company. You've got things like Teddy
Bears and Marbles, and there are also lots of toys
from that the heavy hitting companies like Hasbro. You know've
got things like g I. Joe and Monopoly. So none
of those are really big surprises. But you know, aside

(05:46):
from the Frisbee and the hula hoop, there really isn't
much of a showing from the small time toy makers
out there. Yeah, you're right. That's actually something I noticed
too while looking at the list. I mean, it's pretty
crazy that you know, Frisbee and Hula Hoop, those were
primarily out of as fad toys when they were first released.
I mean, you know, hula hoops hit hard when they
debuted in the spring, and the company sold something like

(06:08):
twenty five million of them in just a couple of months. Yeah,
but by the fall of that same year, sales had
already dried up and it seemed like the hula craze
was gone just as quickly as it had come. Fast
forward though, and the Hula Hoop eventually went on to become,
you know, the first toy to ever sell more than
a hundred million units, and plenty of kids still play

(06:30):
with them today, which is something that nobody would have
predicted back then. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you don't really
see that many toy fads with with those kinds of lags.
I mean, think about the fidget spinners of the past
year or so. They were gone with what a couple
of months after. I mean, still see some of them,
but it's still not nearly what it was there for
a few months. Yeah. No, thankfully that that seems to
have already passed. But uh so, what do you think

(06:52):
is something you know special about whammos? Toys like what
helps them, you know, transcend the limited lifespan that seems
to define all the other fad toys out there. Well,
I mean, honestly, if you don't know, as the toy
specialist of the two of us, I definitely don't know.
But um, but we wanted to take a closer look
at at how the company got it start, So maybe
that'll help us PenPoint some of that whammo difference. So

(07:14):
do you do you want to start us off here, Gabe, Yeah, okay,
in that case, we have to start with some background
on you know, the company's founders, Richard Ner and Arthur
Spuds Melon and Uh. These guys were both born in
and they actually both became salesman at a really early age.
Ner built and sold rubber band guns when he was
nine years old, and Melan caught and sold fish door

(07:36):
to door around the same time. So naturally, when these
two entrepreneurs met years later while attending the University of
Southern California, they hit it off and decided to go
into business together pretty much right away. And at first,
the pair, you know, they weren't set on being a
toy company at all. Instead, they just started looking for
products they could easily sell out of their garage, and

(07:57):
one of the very first ideas that came up was
a homemade slingshot that the pair head designed and built themselves. Well,
I mean, wouldn't you say that a slingshot is a
toy as well? Right? Well, yeah, I mean it definitely
can be. But neur and melon slingshot was actually made
to fire bits of meat upward at falcons, So, you know,
maybe not so much a toy in this case, but

(08:20):
apparently they were both really big into falconry and the
slingshot was something they used to help train their birds. Wow,
I would say that a falcon feeding slingshot that that
to me seems like the definition of a niche product.
It So did they make any money selling something like
that out of a garage? Oh? Yeah, you know, just
most of their customers were people who had happened to

(08:41):
wander by the garage with their pet falcon and right
of course, right uh. They actually sold them through the
mail by taking out ads in Field and Stream and
a few other magazines aimed at outdoorsmen. And not only
did the slingshot give the company its first sales, it
provided the company name too. WAMO was meant to evoke
the sound that the founders heard when they tested their

(09:02):
sling shot by firing ball bearings at a target. Oh wow,
Actually never knew that. Well, hopefully the targeting question at
this point wasn't the falcons, and it wasn't no, no,
no way. They loved those birds too much. But anyway,
Whammos stayed in the projectiles game for a few years
after that, before venturing into toys and beyond sling shots,
they sold blowguns, tomahawks, throwing knives, fencing swords, and also

(09:27):
something they referred to as a jungle machete. Right of course,
you know, for the kids to enjoy, right, right, Actually,
definitely not. But Ner and Melon did make good money
this way. They racked up as much as a hundred
thousand dollars in annual revenue during these early days as
weapons makers. That would have been a ton of money
at that point. So I'm curious that when did they
make this switch from selling weapons to selling toys. Well

(09:50):
that's the thing. At first, they tried not to switch
at all. They just sold both. So WAMMO was a
small operation with no board of directors or shareholders to
answer to. So This meant Ner and Melon were free
to pursue any product idea they wanted, whether weapons, toys,
or anything else. And later, when it became clear that
the two sides of the business were it odds with

(10:11):
each other, you know, weapons and toys, they even tried
splitting the market and selling the weapons under the name
WAMMO without the AH. That's different enough, right, that's just
so clear. I love how it sounds exactly the same.
But taking out an H was somehow going to differentiate
those That was going to make the difference. Surprisingly, it didn't.
People didn't go for the idea at all, and you know,
the weapons were eventually phased out completely and they just

(10:33):
focused on toys. But it wasn't just the creative freedom
of being your own boss that inspired Ner and Melon
to get into the toy business in the mid nineteen fifties.
They were both taken with a relatively recent innovation of
plastic injection molding, and this was a new medium that
came as really a revelation to the traditionally wooden toy industry,
and the guys at WAMO were eager to see what

(10:54):
they could do with it, and their first chance at
bat came in nineteen fifty seven with the frisbee and
need us to say, and I mean, you know it
was a home run for them, Yeah, I would say
pretty much right out of the gate. Now, we should
point out though, that the guys at Wamma weren't the
inventors of the frisbee. And in fact, something I came
across a few times while doing the research for this
episode is that neur and Milan we weren't so much

(11:15):
inventors as they were re inventors. I guess you could say, yeah, no,
that sounds right. I mean, they definitely didn't invent the
sling shot or the blowgun, but they did find the
right approach for introducing those things to the mainstream American market, right,
And so it pretty much went the same way with
the frisbee. I mean, the idea of throwing around this
flat flying disc you can look back and see that

(11:37):
goes all the way back to you know, ancient Greece
with the idea of throwing a discus at that point.
But you know, for the modern incarnation we can look
back to I want to say it's about nineteen thirty seven,
and that's when a seventeen year old named Fred Morrison
and his girlfriend were playing a game of catch with
a lid from a popcorn tin, and apparently they had
such a good time with this that they started looking

(11:57):
for something more durable to throw around, and that's when
they came across one of Fred's mom's pie tins, and
this quickly became the pairs go to disk. In fact,
it was actually this disc that they were playing with
on a beach when a passerby noticed how much fun
they were having, and so the guy stopped and asked
Fred if he would actually be willing to sell the
pieton for about a quarter and of course, since it

(12:19):
had cost him a lot less than that to buy
brand new, Fred happily agreed to do this, and soon
after that encounter, Fred's had to work on these what
he called flying cake pans. He started selling them all
along the beaches of southern California. Oh man, that's awesome,
But are all right? So this is still the thirties
and WIMO didn't take notice until the fifties. So what

(12:39):
I mean did Morrison just sell cake pans on the
beach for the next twenty years, Well not exactly, I
mean Fred's beach side business was put on hold during
World War Two and he was serving overseas as a
fighter pilot at the time. But all the while he
kept thinking about how to improve these flying disks that
he and his girlfriend who was then his wife at
this point, had had so much fun playing with. And

(13:01):
by the time the war ended, Fred had come up
with an answer, and he found it. By adding a
sloped edge, his disc would fly better and stay in
the air longer too. And so today, that same slope
that you see on these Frisbees, it's on all of
Wammo's Frisbees at least, and that's known as Marson Slope
in Fred's honor. Oh wow, that's pretty cool. Well, I mean,

(13:21):
and speaking of names, when did the name Frisbee come along?
Was it with Morrison's new post war model. Actually, the
Frisbee proper was still a few years off at this point,
but Fred did try a few different names in the meantime,
you know, hoping to take advantage of the growing space
craze at the time. He dubbed his new disc the
Pluto Platter for a while. And you know, once he

(13:41):
was armed with this far catchier brand name, Fred was
traveling up and down the California coast, selling these Pluto
platters and just doing this out of the back of
his station, wagging at the beaches and at local fairs.
And so then he fast forward to nineteen fifty five,
and he had pretty modest sales at that point, but
he was selling some of these and had caught the
attention of the WAMMO founders, and so they of course

(14:04):
quickly snapped up the rights and released their own plastic
version of the Pluto platter. This was in nineteen fifty seven.
Within a year, they'd sold a million of these disks.
I mean, that's really impressive to have sold that. No,
definitely that quickly. So WAMMO kept Morrison's space name at first,
I mean, not to be the dead horse. But when

(14:24):
did it finally switch to Frisbee? And come to think
of it, why did it switch to Frisbee? I mean,
both of the earlier names seemed to be, you know,
much more descriptive of the actual you know product, Pluto platter,
and I mean that at least you know what that is.
What's a frisbee right right? Well, and this is where
things get a little bit more modeled, and so we
kind of have to go on legend, And according to

(14:45):
this legend, Ner and Melon were taken with Fred's disk
in part because they had recently taken a trip to
New England, and while on that trip, they had seen
some Yale students who were playing catch with pie pans
that they had gotten from this local place. It was
called the Frisbee Baking Come Penny, and the students would
take the empty pans from the dining hall and toss
them back and forth while yelling Frisbee, you know, to

(15:07):
kind of warn people of incoming pans. And the practice
supposedly dates as far back as the nineteen twenties, and
it was pretty common in both Connecticut and New York.
But that said, Whammo's own website admits that the founders
might just as easily have been inspired by this comic
strip of the era that was called Mr Frisbee, So
we don't really know, but whatever the reason, Whammo relaunched

(15:30):
their flying desk under the name Frisbee in nineteen fifty eight.
It immediately caught on at playgrounds and college campuses all
over the country. Well see, I asked about it because
I'm just always so impressed when a company you know,
pulls a name out of thin air that just perfectly
encapsulates the product, despite the fact that it's you know,
kind of nonsensical and doesn't have any direct connection to

(15:53):
what they're selling, you know, like apple or BlackBerry. I
read an interesting article in the New Yorker actually about
this company called Lexicon, which is a firm that invents
names for new products. Yeah, I've heard of these guys. Yeah, Well,
the CEO had a really great insight about what makes
for a good product name. He said that the best
brand name functions like a poem. They compress all these

(16:15):
various meanings and associations into a single pleasing word and
it just somehow sums it all up. That's pretty interesting,
you know. And the guys that wammo must have felt
strongly that they had the right name for the job,
because they actually had to change the spelling of Frisbee
from what was at first an ending of I E
two E in order to you know, kind of make
it more unique and and give it this, you know,

(16:37):
this feel of this nonsense word that they could actually
trademark from there. And of course, the funny thing is
that these days everybody just kind of loosely called any
flying disc of Frisbee right, which is something that Wammo hates,
I'm sure because any time a brand name, you know, it,
gets popular like that, it runs the risk of becoming
generic size. In some ways, going generic is you know,
the biggest compliment a company can get, because it means

(17:00):
that they picked a really resonant name for their product.
But on the other hand, becoming the de facto term
makes it harder to defend your own trademark. And my
favorite example of this is Transformers, which yes I'm bringing
up for a second time today. Can't let it go, Gabe,
can't let it go. In order to keep their brand
name from becoming the catch all term for any toy

(17:20):
that transforms from one thing into another, Hasbro is careful
to never use the word transform on their packaging. Instead,
the figures are said to convert from one form to
another completely different, and that way the name remains connected
to their specific characters, you know, the Transformers, instead of
becoming a description for a whole class of toys that

(17:43):
happened to include transformation as a play feature. I mean,
it is interesting that they have to think about that
kind of thing, but it makes sense. But all right,
well we should get back to the Whammo toys because
the Frisbee really was just the start for them. But
before we do, let's take a quick break. You're listening

(18:11):
to Part Time Genius and we're talking about Whammo. You know,
this fledgling toy company that sparked America's novelty craze in
the nineteen fifties. All right, so we talked about how
the founders of Wamma were always on the hunt for
these off beat ideas to turn into new products, and
you know, the Frisbee was just the first of these
to hit the toy market. And I'm curious, as a
toy freak, what is your favorite thing that Whammo has

(18:34):
ever made? Okay, well, first of all, toy enthusiasts would
be the preferred nomenclat My bad, My bad. But to
answer your question, I've always been partial to the hula hoop,
though really that's only in theory, Like I don't think
I could spin one to save my life, But I'm
all about the idea of the hula hoop, you know,
the idea. So what is that exactly? Like let go

(18:56):
and look silly or what's the idea of the hula hoop.
Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, that's pretty much it. Like
did you ever see that Cohen Brothers movie The Hudsucker Proxy. Yeah,
it was funny. Yeah, Well for anybody who hasn't. It
was this fictionalized account of how the hula hoop and
the frisbee were invented, and the whole thing is, you know,
really silly as you would hope. But there's this great
line about the hula hoop from the inventor's secretary that

(19:19):
I always think back to, and she says, quote, finally
there would be a thing of a jig that would
bring everyone together even if it kept them apart spatially.
I had forgotten that quote actually, but it's true too.
I mean, like the hula hoop with the whole country
into this frenzy when it came out in and just
about everybody, girls and boys, children and adults. They they

(19:41):
were united by this simple joy of trying to see
how long they could keep a plastic hoops spinning around
their waist. And he'd already mentioned the crazy sales that
hula hoop pulled in, but it really is hard to
overstate just how big of a hit this was with
the American public. I was actually flipping through a book
called American Fat Ads by social historian named Richard A. Johnson,

(20:03):
and one thing he points out is that the hula
hoop was the first modern fad in a way because
it was the first to spread through this new medium
of television. And really because of that, the hula hoop
is still, according to Johnson, quote, the standard against which
all national crazes are measured. Yeah, that seems true, and
I mean, you know that success it also highlights how

(20:24):
there's really no rhyme nor reason to what can or
can't become a toy fad in America. Like, for example,
the hula hoop was inspired by this bamboo hoop that
Australian kids used to exercise within gym class, and a
friend of the Whammo founders, you know, brought one back
from vacation and pitched it to the company as a
possible product. So alright, so one country's gym equipment became

(20:47):
another's biggest toy craze or what right? Yeah, Ner and
the and melon they saw the potential right away, just
as they had with Fred Morrison's Pluto platter. But you know,
they also recognized that it wasn't exact an original idea,
like we were saying, hoop toys like flying discs have
a long history, you know, they go back to ancient times,
like I'm pretty sure the Egyptians had their own version

(21:10):
made from like these twisted reads. And this meant that
securing a patent for Wamo it was unlikely, so the
toymakers instead they shifted focus to finding the perfect name
so that they could at least get a trademark for it.
And it took some brainstorming, but once they made the
connection between the hip gyrations of the hula hoop and
those of Hawaiian dance moves, the rest was history. Well,

(21:33):
and you know, listening to you lay it all out here,
I'm noticing that Whammo borrowed a technique from Fred Marson's
playbook on this one. And you remember when he came
up with the Pluto platter name as a way to
capitalize on that space crazy. I mean, Wamo was doing
this with the hula hoop and it kind of does
the same thing with the whole exotic getaway. You know,
this Polynesian pop trend that really took off. I guess

(21:54):
it was probably around the late fifties that this was exploding, right, Yeah, yeah, no,
that's a good point. And I mean, you know, there's
no denying it's a great name, right, I mean, the alliteration,
the fun vowel sounds, it's like the total package in
terms of brand name. And again, this is all stuff
the naming experts now site as the makings of a
strong brand name. For example, the word hula was a

(22:16):
safe bet to use because it follows a consonant vowel
consonant pattern, which gives it a soft, pleasant sound. And
since those are also the easiest kinds of letter combinations
to pronounce, they're usually the first that infants learned to say,
no matter which language they speak. Yeah, that makes sense.
In fact, my kids first words were get this. There

(22:37):
were Gatorade and Amazon, so that there were a lot
of mixed emotions in both of those cases. Yeah, you
must be proud. I mean, yeah, there you go. It
works right. But aside from the catchy name, hula Hoop
also benefited from an elaborate and unorthodox marketing campaign. For instance,
WAMO held publicity events at California playgrounds to demonstrate how

(22:59):
fun the toy was and they even handed out free hoops,
so the kids could you know, advertise to their friends
who had missed out on the freebees. Well, you know,
and even if the hula craze went belly up a
few months after going to market, it still gave Wamo
this this national exposure and it had never dreamed of
having this kind of exposure when they were just you know,
these regional toymakers. And so he didn't make the most

(23:21):
of this newfound buzz, Wamo relaunched the Pluto platter as
the Frisbee, and that was in nine and so this
time the toy company played up this athletic angle and
even developed the sport of ultimate frisbee. And this was
a way to drum up interest among other athletes. And
so the plan involved paying college kids to throw the
disks around on campus and it was a huge success.

(23:44):
You know. Frisbee went on to become Wammo's best selling
product to date. Actually, yeah, and Wammo really trended upward
after that for a long time, like they held fast
to their open door policy, you know, happily taking product
pitches from pretty much all comers, and in the early
sixties the practice paid off for them again when a

(24:04):
chemist named Norm Stingley. He brought WAMO a highly volatile
chemical compound that actually later became the super Bowl, And
according to Richard Ner, it took us nearly two years
to iron out the kinks of super ball before we
produced it. It always had that marvelous, springing, nous recovery

(24:24):
rate after hitting a hard surface, far beyond that of
any other ball, but it had a tendency to fly apart.
We've licked that with a very high pressure technique for
forming it, and now we're selling millions. I'm not exactly
sure what a recovery rate after hitting a hard surface means,
but it doesn't seem like exactly a humble guy. Was he? Oh,

(24:47):
not so much, No, but I mean he was honest.
Wammos sold six million super balls when they debuted in
nine By the end of the decade, those sales had
surpassed twenty million. At the high of production, WAMO was
making one hundred and seventy thousand super balls each day,
and they were so popular that President Johnson's National security

(25:09):
advisor he actually ordered five dozen of them and gave
them out to his staff to use as stress relievers. Wow.
I'd say that's a pretty ringing endorsement. So WAMMO started
to rack up the successes in the late fifties and
early sixties. But I mean, let's be honest about this,
they weren't all winning ideas. I mean, these are fun
to talk about, and even some of the ones that
were hits turned out to be a bit of trouble

(25:31):
in the long run. I mean, just just look at
the slipping slide. Oh yeah, I mean, there are just
so many horror stories out there about kids getting like
nasty friction burns from sliding across two little water or
you know, people who tore up their backs by sliding
over a rough patch of dirt or a hidden rock.
Slipping slide was no joke. Yeah, And and and honestly, all
those stories of injuries just made me feel bad for

(25:52):
the guy who invented the slipping slide, because if you
look at the origin story, that was exactly the kind
of thing he was trying to prevent in the fur place.
And I know that may sound weird, but the inventor's
name was Robert Carrier, and he was the upholsterer who
just wanted to make an activity called body planing a
little bit safer. Okay, wait, what is body planing exactly?

(26:14):
I have to be honest, I had no idea until
doing the research for this episode. But and I couldn't
find a ton of information on this. But according to Carrier,
body planning was a popular pastime in some circles. It
basically consisted of hurling yourself into shallow water and then
sliding along a slick coating of mud, which which kind
of sounds fun. It does, yeah, I mean it kind

(26:35):
of just sounds like a naturally occurring slipping slide, right,
and and that's pretty much what it is. But you know,
the problem was that body planning was pretty dangerous and
also just kind of a hassle. As Carrier put it
in his patent filing quote, the primary disadvantages with the
ideal natural environments for body planing and sliding our first
the scarcity of such places. Second, the fact that mud

(26:57):
and clay frequently carries sharp and abrasive material, reals which
are dangerous. And third, such material is extremely messy and
generally distasteful or unpleasant. Oh man, talk about thorough that
is that is quite a description. But I mean he
really took his body planing. Seriously, it sounds like, yeah,
and he just wanted to give people a way to
enjoy sliding on a thin layer of water without all

(27:19):
the mud and sharp, pointy objects that had given body
planing such a limited appeal, you know, and that was
kind of the dream WAMMO could get behind. Well yeah,
I mean, but for all their enthusiasm, you know, they
sure went about marketing it in a weird way. Like
I found this one early ad for Slipping Slide where
the tagline was just it's crazy people scoot like seals.

(27:41):
I saw that. I've loved that line. You know. Actually,
at at one point the announcer assure as viewers that
quote girls slide as well as boys, you know, in
case that needed clarifying for some reason. Yeah, nice to
know WAMO was, you know, so progressive on the hot
button issue of equal opportunities sliding exactly. Yeah, and just
think this was all they marketed the successful toys, like,

(28:02):
can you imagine what they came up with for the duds? Well, actually,
we should stop imagining this. I mean, I think we
should take a little time to highlight some of the
more ridiculous failed ventures that WAMMO has tried over the years,
and some of them are just too bad to stay forgotten,
to be honest with you, Yeah, yeah, I mean that
sounds like a lot of fun. But first, let's take
a quick break. Okay, Well, so, what's one of the weirder,

(28:37):
lesser known wammo toys that you came across while researching? Well,
it's hard to choose, but I think my favorite is
probably instant fish. And and this was an idea that
Melon came up with while he was on this research
trip to Africa in the nineteen sixties. And I love that, Like,
Melon is like the toy world's answer to Willy Wonka, right, Like,

(28:57):
isn't that how Wonka like supposedly found that blumpas Yeah,
you might be right about this, but in Melon's case,
all he found were kill a fish, which are these
small breed of freshwater fish and actually lay their eggs
in the mud before the start of Africa's dry season
and so then once the mud dries out, the eggs
are just there and their dorm and until the rains
come back, and that's when they begin to hatch. Okay,

(29:20):
so instant fish, I mean it's kind of like sea monkeys, right, exactly,
and so sea monkeys have been released a few years
before this, and Melon and Nerd thought that, you know,
this small cube of mud containing these dormant kill a
fish eggs would be more interesting than these microscopic Brian
strump and so kids could simply drop the mud into
a tank of water and wait for their new pets

(29:41):
to hatch. And so for a while it looked like
wammo had a hit on their hands there with the
New York Toy fair and Melan and Nerd took something
like ten million dollars worth of pre orders from retailers
that were just hungry for these instant fish. It's kind
of crazy. Well, they unfortunately hit a snag when they
realized that the fish that they brought back from Africa

(30:01):
weren't breeding fast enough to meet demand, and so wammo
was forced to refund all of these orders and the
dream of instant fish was suddenly dead. Ah and what
a beautiful dream it was. But for my money, though,
wammo's weirdest offering was the Mr Hoodie egg rag. This
was something that released in the late nineteen fifties. I mean,

(30:24):
say what you will about the name instant fish, I mean,
at least you know what you're getting. But did you say,
Mr Hoodie egg Ray? I mean, none of this makes
sense to me? What is this? Well? Maybe this ad
copy will help. It reads fabulous. The only wooger Snatcher
for eggs takes egg woogers and bits of eggshell off

(30:46):
the yolk quickly and neatly. But that's not all. Will
the Mr Hoodie egg rac also quote attacks onions, olives,
and bar fruit in small jars without fear? So not
only did that answer is zero of my questions, I
now have several new ones, like, first of all, what
the heck is an egg wooger? And why is a

(31:07):
rake the best way to deal with it? Well, apparently
woogers are what Melan called the stringy substance that connects
the yoke to the egg shell, So I don't know.
For some reason he thought people would be interested in
a tool to remove that stuff. Oh and to help
rake olives out of little jars too, I guess. But
I think it's safe to say it wasn't wamo's biggest seller. Yeah, well,

(31:29):
I think it's safe to say that no one bought
that thing. Ever, I was actually just pulling up the
ad that you read earlier, and this Mr Hoodie guys
actually pretty terrifying. First of all, I don't know what
those guys were thinking, Like, did they have a bet
that year to see who could make the creepiest product
or what? No, but I checked out a book by
Tim Walsh called The Wamo Super Book, and he says

(31:51):
that Melan and Ner most likely drew up the concept
as a joke just to make themselves laugh, but then
they decided to just go ahead and actually really us
the thing, because I don't know why not. I love
that they were in a position to be able to
do that, and I kind of love the spirit of
these guys because they I mean, they were brilliant in
their own right, but they were also a couple of goofballs.

(32:12):
I mean Mr Hoodie egg raik. I mean, that's just
so bizarre. But you know, they embraced this inventiveness at
every turn, and they took these frequent big risk you know,
just for fun for fun sake, And it's really fun
to be able to see them doing this, and so
many other companies would have never even thought to try
these things. And I don't know, maybe most importantly they

(32:33):
were having just as much fun dreaming up these off
the wall products as their customers were actually playing with them. Yeah,
I mean, it was sad to dive into the research
on this one and see how that approach the toymaking
eventually fell out of fashion. You know, in the wake
of video games and other electronic toys in the seventies
and eighties, there was a sense that wimows old school

(32:54):
products were a little past their prime. By that point,
the country had moved on and found brighter, shiny, you're
more expensive toys to play with, which is probably a
big part of why Melon and Nerve eventually agreed to
sell Wamo Ino. It just wasn't fun anymore. Well that's true,
But you know, the Wamo brand has pressed on in
the years since then, regardless of this. And and actually

(33:15):
this year, Wamo turns eighty years old, and the latest
group of executives in charge of keeping the company afloat
in this digital era, they're they're trying to think of
anything they can to help make Wamo seem younger. I mean,
just just listen to this description of Wamo's latest venture
from an article in the l A. Times. It says
Wamo is developing a frisbee app that will essentially allow

(33:36):
the disk to be thrown quote thrown from one mobile
device to another, says all the gratification of backhanding a
low slider to your body without any of that running
into a tree messiness. Well, I mean, not to be
a toy snob or anything, but it doesn't sound like
there's much gratification in something like that at all. I mean,
so many of Wamo's classic products were built on what

(33:59):
I would make be described as a I don't know,
a pure notion of play. Like. Most of their toys
have two things in common, right, They encourage people to
move around outdoors, and they're all pretty simple in design.
Who would disc a ball. Those qualities together are probably
another reason why Wammo toys have been more enduring than

(34:19):
all the other fad toys that have come after them.
And I'm sorry, a frisbee app it just has none
of that appeal, if it's any consolation gave. Wamo is
also gearing up to release some new physical toys, so
that's a good thing. And for example, there's the Aquabo,
which can shoot water balloons up to a hundred and
fifty yards, and apparently there's also gonna be a big

(34:40):
shake up to the frisbee design pretty soon gave what
that's okay? Uh A little a little hesitant about this
if they said, what will be different about it at all? Well,
they've been pretty tight lipped about this, but the president
did spill a few details in an l A Times
article and reportedly the new frisbee will be quote shape
more like a square and can thus self correct and

(35:03):
fly longer and straighter than the saucer shaped disc and
you know, for what it's worth. The company president also
boasted it would quote change everything. I'm sure that's true. Again,
I think they might be getting away from that whole
fun for funds sake idea, you know, the one that
made the early Wammo toys such evergreen products for all

(35:23):
these decades later, Like the frisbee was never meant to
change everything. But you know, since it's a dependable source
of fun that just about anybody can afford, it makes
for a great toy anyway, and it always will, right
because something like a super ball won't stay a kid's
favorite toy for very long, but it is one that
can always return to for these quick bursts of simple fun.

(35:46):
And you know, to me, there's a special kind of
staying power because it seems to tap into something primal
and something universal. Maybe. I mean, you know, no matter
how old someone is, if you put them in a
room with a super Bowl, they're gonna be entertained for
it least a couple of minutes. Well amen to that.
And I think it might be time to admit that
Mango never went to Mexico at all? Did he will?

(36:08):
You just locked him in a room with a bunch
of super balls, right, you know I gave I didn't
lock anything. He can come out of there any time
he wants, well, wherever he is. I don't think he's
gonna make it back in time for today's fact off.
So I mean, what do you say, are you ready
for a new challenger, because I don't know. I'm kind
of itching to try my hand at one of these,
all right, But don't think I'm gonna go easy on

(36:29):
you just because he's a new guy. But I will
let you go first. So you know those little cozy coops,
the cars that it seems like every toddler has, the
little red cars with the yellow top. That's what I
had as a kid. Well, many years later, little Tyke

(36:52):
sells in the neighborhood of half a million of those
every year, which makes it the best selling car in America.
That's pretty impressive. Half a million, that's actually a ton.
That's that's pretty impressive. Well, it won't come as a
surprise to any of us that George Lucas has made
a fortune off of the toys from the massive Star
Wars empire, but how he did it maybe actually even

(37:14):
more impressive. So even though he was already a pretty
big deal by the time he started work on the
first of the Star Wars films, he had a strategy
to this. He actually agreed to accept a salary of
only a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to work
on the film. He could have actually asked for much
much more, But in doing so, he was actually able
to keep the rights to direct the sequels and the

(37:36):
rights to all the licensing, including toys. So of course
all those sales made him several multiples of that salary
difference in that very first films. So forward thinking on
his part. Wow, well, okay, this is a quick one.
The first toy ever advertised on TV, Mr Potato Head,
back in nineteen fifty two fifty two. I didn't realize

(37:57):
it had been around that long. That was what was
that a you decades before he stopped smoking? I guess right,
that was. I think it was in the late eighties
he decided to give the pipe. Potato Head ever smoked? Well,
I don't know, Yeah, yeah, no, this was a big deal.
He gave up his pipe at some point as part
of like the Great Americans smokeout or something, and he
became there like I think they called him there spoke

(38:19):
Spud or something like that. It was. It was pretty wild,
all right. Well, I've got a pretty good quick fact too. Um,
did you know that the world's largest distributor of toys
is McDonald's. Oh wow, I didn't that. That makes a
lot of sense though. Well, did you know that there
are now travel companies, including one called Nagi Travel in Japan,
that lead tours for your stuffed animals? Yeah, that's right.

(38:43):
For thirty to ars somewhere in there, you can send
your stuffed love one on a pretty incredible journey. You'll
get photos which are uploaded to Facebook and lots of
other fun updates. And I'll admit, at first I thought,
why in the world would someone want to do this,
But then I read a sum are sent by kids
who maybe aren't able to travel, you know, if they're

(39:03):
in the hospital or for some other reason, or sometimes
they're sent just for education purposes. You know, I will
admit that's actually a pretty nice idea when you say
those are the ways that could possibly do it. But alright,
so did you know they're over forty three quintillion combinations
on a Rubik's cube. But the even crazier thing is

(39:23):
that no matter what the combination is, there's a solution
within twenty moves of that not for me? All right, Well, well,
I remember you saying you were a fan of the
hey Man cartoon when you were a kid. That's right,
But did you know that the cartoon was not exactly planned?
But apparently a marketing director at Mattel claimed in a

(39:44):
meeting with some toy executives that a cartoon series was
in the works even though it wasn't, so you know,
they were kind of forced to make it. Wow, that
is impressive. And and I can remember as a kid
standing in my den with my sword in my hands,
screaming by the power of ray school. So I guess
I kind of owe Thank you to that marketing director
for some high quality animated entertainment, and Gabe, I have

(40:08):
to admit it, you really delivered on that one in
your very first fact off from a full episode. So
I'm gonna give you this week's fact Off trophy. Oh man,
it is a true honor. Will thanks so much and
thank all of you for listening. Man Guesh will be
back from his vacation and joining us in the next episode.
If you have any great facts that we forgot to
mention in this episode about toys, we'd love to hear

(40:30):
those from. You can email us part Time Genius and
How Stuff Works dot com. You can also call us
one fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius,
or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius

(40:58):
is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even begin to understand. Noel Brown made the
theme song and does the MIXI MIXI sound thing gave.
Louesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army,
including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown, and Lucas Adams. If you

(41:21):
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. And if
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could
leave a good review for us. Jason who

Part-Time Genius News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Will Pearson

Will Pearson

Mangesh Hattikudur

Mangesh Hattikudur

Show Links

AboutRSS

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.