ARCADIA, Calif. — Richard Knerr, co-founder of Wham-O Inc., which unleashed the granddaddy of American fads, the Hula Hoop, on the world a half-century ago along with another enduring leisure icon, the Frisbee, died Monday following a stroke, his wife, Dorothy, said. He was 82.
With his boyhood best friend, Arthur “Spud” Melin, Knerr started the company in 1948 in Pasadena. They named the enterprise “Wham-O.”
A treasure chest of toys followed that often bore playful names: Superball, so bouncy it seemed to defy gravity; Slip ‘N Slide and its giggle-inducing cousin the Water Wiggle; and Silly String, which was much harder to get out of the hair than advertised.
When a friend told Knerr and Melin about a bamboo ring used for exercise in Australia, they devised their own version without seeing the original. They ran an early test of the product in 1958 at a Pasadena, Calif., elementary school and enticed their test subjects by telling them they could keep the hoops if they mastered them.
They seeded the market, giving hoops away in neighborhoods to create a buzz and required Wham-O executives to bring hoops with them on planes so people would ask about them.
Wham-O was soon producing 20,000 hoops a day at plants in at least seven countries while other companies made knock-offs. Within four months, 25 million of the hoops had been sold, according to Wham-O.
Wham-O toys often had an air of originality that Knerr called the “wow” factor. He defined it as the moment when “you’re . . . showing it off and everybody says, ‘What’s that? What’s that?’ ”
The company founders experienced their own “wow” moment when former Air Force pilot Fred Morrison was spotted at the beach playing with his invention, the Pluto Platter. They bought the rights, modified it and renamed it Frisbee before releasing it in 1958.
Richard Knerr was born June 30, 1925, in San Gabriel, Calif. As a teenager, he met his future business partner, Melin, and the two remained lifelong friends. They went to the University of Southern California together.
