Retro news: How cake tins became frisbees
13.1.2024
Translation: machine translated
There is hardly a visit to the park without the risk of having a frisbee thrown at your head. The worldwide triumph of the popular throwing disc began 67 years ago today.
On 13 January 1957, the American toy company Wham-O started selling the first throwing discs under the name "Pluto Platter". It was only later that the company renamed its disc Frisbee. However, the idea of flying discs around for fun is much older.
From flying popcorn lids and cake tins
Tossing games have been around for ages. It is not known who first came up with the idea of using plate-like objects for this purpose. However, the man who first wanted to earn money with it was Walter Frederick Morrison (1920 - 2010). He and his wife enjoyed throwing the lids of popcorn containers at each other, but they didn't have particularly good flight characteristics. So he came up with round, flat cake tins with raised edges.
Even before the Second World War, Morrison began selling cake tins as "Flyin' Cake Pans" in parks and on the beaches of Los Angeles. After the war, he tinkered with the trays to enable more stable trajectories. The result was the "Pluto Platter" in the early 1950s, a plastic disc that was already very similar to today's frisbees. Morrison also sold this disc - and was so successful that the Californian toy company Wham-O took notice. Wham-O has a nose for successful concepts: it was also the first company to produce and sell hula hoops.
And so the "Pluto Platter" made its way into the range and eventually into people's picnic bags. Morrison sold his rights to it directly to Wham-O ten days after it went on sale.
Students gave the Frisbee its name
The brand name "Pluto Platter" did not catch on, however. The founders of Wham-O realised that students were calling the disc Frisbie instead - after the "Frisbie Pie Company", a large bakery in Connecticut that supplied Yale University with pies, among other things.
Back in the 1940s, students threw leftover pie tins with the words "Frisbie Pies" stamped on them around campus. This is how the name "Frisbie" spread before the well-known product came onto the market. Wham-O changed the spelling of the name only slightly to avoid problems with trade mark law. The throwing disc was a huge success: by 2010, 200 million Frisbees had been sold.
If you don't have one and want to get ready for the leisure season, you can also stock up on a frisbee from us.
When did you last play frisbee?
Header image: Rita_Kochmarjova/Shutterstock
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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