The "Frisbee" Flies Into Toy History
A man throwing a pie tin goes global...
January 23, 1957
The commercial beginnings of what would become the “Frisbee” were launched on this date when the rights for a flying toy disc called the “Pluto Platter” were sold to the Wham-O Toy Company by Walter Frederick “Fred” Morrison. Who could ever have known that a revolution in leisure entertainment was about to take place?
The inventor was born in Utah and flew P-47 Thunderbolt Spitfires over Italy during WWII. He was even shot down and spent several months in a POW camp. Back home in the U.S. Fred settled in Los Angles and became a carpenter. By all respects a no-nonsense kind of guy, the one passion that Fred and his wife Lucile did share was time on the beach. One day he and Lucile were throwing a pie tin to one another on Venice Beach when someone offered to buy the tin for 25 cents. Since pie tins cost a nickel, Fred and “Lu” began a small side business selling pie pans in different colors. Eventually, Fred brought in an investor and had a plastic disc produced, but sales were slow, causing Fred to re-think the idea and make some changes.
Finally, in 1954 Fred developed the product that would eventually become known to the world as the Frisbee, a plastic disc with the edges rolled down that was called the “Pluto Platter.” At the time, Wham-O was a major player in the multi-million-dollar toy market, and they came calling after learning that college kids in the northeast were showing great enthusiasm about the product. These college students even gave the invention its own moniker, calling it by the slang term “frisbee,” after a local pie manufacturer who was selling copies of the Pluto Platter. Needless to say that Frisbee sounds a lot cooler than Pluto Platter, and within a few years the power of television advertising had made Frisbee a new word in the American vernacular.
Besides the youthful fun of just throwing the plastic disc, the sports of Disc Golf and Ultimate both owe a huge debt of gratitude to Fred Morrison and his “pie tin” revolution. Sales of “flying plastic discs” under a variety of names was estimated to be valued at $1.1 billion in 2023. Who’s says being a beach bum doesn’t have its rewards?