Zorro
01-18-2008, 11:06 PM
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/01/18/business/18knerr.span.jpg
Richard Knerr, who gave the company he and a friend started in a garage the altogether appropriate name Wham-O, then marketed products that for two decades virtually defined frivolity in postwar America, from the Hula Hoop to the Frisbee to the SuperBall, died on Monday at his home in Arcadia, Calif. He was 82.
The cause was complications of a stroke, said Stefan Pollack, a Wham-O spokesman.
Mr. Knerr (pronounced nur) and Arthur Melin had a talent for turning seemingly quirky ideas into national passions. In 1958, their Hula Hoop invigorated members of a rock ’n’ roll generation eager to shake their hips, if only to keep the precarious plastic ring from dropping to their feet.
The marketplace shook almost as much as derričres. Richard A. Johnson, in his book “American Fads” (William Morrow, 1985), said the plastic hoop “remains the standard against which all national crazes are measured.”
In the first year, Wham-O sold as many as 40 million hoops; by 1960, 100 million, a mark no other toy had ever reached. After too many households had two or three of the hoops, the fad evaporated, leaving Wham-O marooned on a mountain of tubular plastic. Total profit: only $10,000, a result of business inexperience and millions of unsold hoops.
“We completely lost control,” Mr. Knerr told Forbes magazine in 1982.
The Hula Hoop financial debacle was unusual, however. The company had done, and would do, considerably better on products like the Frisbee, for which it bought the rights, streamlined and named. Brought to market in 1957, the Frisbee became a lasting diversion, and even the basis of competitive sports, some of which Wham-O invented.
Other Wham-O brainstorms included the exceedingly bouncy SuperBall, the Water Wiggly sprinkler, the Slip ’N Slide water slide, the Limbo Game and Silly String, a seemingly endless stream of liquid that hardened after being expelled from an aerosol can, all too often in a child’s hair.
The company’s formula was to have a stable of 8 to 12 simple and inexpensive products that could be sold at a price five times the cost of manufacturing and promotion. The company solicited ideas from the public, receiving as many as 20 a day, and relied on in-house inventors.
Wham-O marketed most of its products in the spring and summer, just when many of the seasonal workers at Christmas-oriented toy makers were being laid off. So it had plenty of workers when it most needed them. Another advantage was the range of stores and departments within stores where Wham-O’s wacky products could be placed.
Mr. Knerr attributed Wham-O’s success to an indefinable mix of serendipity and hard work. “It took us nearly two years to get the kinks out of the SuperBall before we produced it,” he said in an interview with Popular Science in 1966.
Richard Knerr was born June 30, 1925, in San Gabriel, Calif. He and Mr. Melin, nicknamed Spud, were boyhood friends who attended the University of Southern California (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_southern_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org) together. Mr. Knerr earned a business degree there. Both rejected urgings to work in their fathers’ businesses.
Their first marketing idea was a slingshot; they had been using one to hurl meat to their pet falcons to train them. After buying a power saw from Sears, Roebuck & Company with a $7 down payment, they started making slingshots in Mr. Knerr’s parents’ garage and selling them by mail order through magazines like Field and Stream. The name Wham-O came from their interpretation of the noise a slingshot made.
Mr. Knerr and Mr. Melin focused at first on sporting goods rather than toys, stressing unusual items like crossbows, boomerangs and tomahawks. The two were so informal about their business, they claimed not to know which one was president and which one was executive vice president. (Mr. Knerr was president.)
The beginning of their breakthrough came in 1955 when they bumped into Walter Frederick Morrison selling his flying disks in a parking lot. They bought the rights to what Mr. Morrison called Pluto Platters. Ed Headrick, Wham-O’s research and development man, added aerodynamic details like the rings surrounding the top.
Many accounts trace the Frisbee name to college students, especially at Yale (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), who played catch with pie tins made by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Conn. In a 2002 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Kerr said it was a coincidence that Wham-O chose the same name. He said the name came from a comic-strip character named Mr. Frisbie.
Mr. Knerr and Mr. Melin came up with the idea for the Hula Hoop after encountering a wooden hoop used in exercise classes in Australia. Their epiphany came when a friend from Australia showed them how to gyrate their hips to spin the thing.
In 1982, Mr. Melin persuaded Mr. Knerr to sell Wham-O to the Kransco Group Companies for $12 million. It was later sold to Mattel (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/mattel_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org), which then sold it to an investors’ group.
Mr. Knerr is survived by his wife, Dorothy; his daughters, Melody Knerr and Lori Gregory; a son, Chuck; a stepson, Richard Enright; a stepdaughter, Jeanne Stokes; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Melin died in 2002.
Not all of Mr. Knerr’s brainstorms succeeded. Among them were mail-order mink coats for $9.95, a $119 do-it-yourself bomb shelter and Instant Fish, an African import whose egg-laying ability could not keep up with product orders.
An attempt in 1982 to reintroduce Hula Hoops — this time with a peppermint scent wafting from the ring — went nowhere.
Richard Knerr, who gave the company he and a friend started in a garage the altogether appropriate name Wham-O, then marketed products that for two decades virtually defined frivolity in postwar America, from the Hula Hoop to the Frisbee to the SuperBall, died on Monday at his home in Arcadia, Calif. He was 82.
The cause was complications of a stroke, said Stefan Pollack, a Wham-O spokesman.
Mr. Knerr (pronounced nur) and Arthur Melin had a talent for turning seemingly quirky ideas into national passions. In 1958, their Hula Hoop invigorated members of a rock ’n’ roll generation eager to shake their hips, if only to keep the precarious plastic ring from dropping to their feet.
The marketplace shook almost as much as derričres. Richard A. Johnson, in his book “American Fads” (William Morrow, 1985), said the plastic hoop “remains the standard against which all national crazes are measured.”
In the first year, Wham-O sold as many as 40 million hoops; by 1960, 100 million, a mark no other toy had ever reached. After too many households had two or three of the hoops, the fad evaporated, leaving Wham-O marooned on a mountain of tubular plastic. Total profit: only $10,000, a result of business inexperience and millions of unsold hoops.
“We completely lost control,” Mr. Knerr told Forbes magazine in 1982.
The Hula Hoop financial debacle was unusual, however. The company had done, and would do, considerably better on products like the Frisbee, for which it bought the rights, streamlined and named. Brought to market in 1957, the Frisbee became a lasting diversion, and even the basis of competitive sports, some of which Wham-O invented.
Other Wham-O brainstorms included the exceedingly bouncy SuperBall, the Water Wiggly sprinkler, the Slip ’N Slide water slide, the Limbo Game and Silly String, a seemingly endless stream of liquid that hardened after being expelled from an aerosol can, all too often in a child’s hair.
The company’s formula was to have a stable of 8 to 12 simple and inexpensive products that could be sold at a price five times the cost of manufacturing and promotion. The company solicited ideas from the public, receiving as many as 20 a day, and relied on in-house inventors.
Wham-O marketed most of its products in the spring and summer, just when many of the seasonal workers at Christmas-oriented toy makers were being laid off. So it had plenty of workers when it most needed them. Another advantage was the range of stores and departments within stores where Wham-O’s wacky products could be placed.
Mr. Knerr attributed Wham-O’s success to an indefinable mix of serendipity and hard work. “It took us nearly two years to get the kinks out of the SuperBall before we produced it,” he said in an interview with Popular Science in 1966.
Richard Knerr was born June 30, 1925, in San Gabriel, Calif. He and Mr. Melin, nicknamed Spud, were boyhood friends who attended the University of Southern California (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_southern_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org) together. Mr. Knerr earned a business degree there. Both rejected urgings to work in their fathers’ businesses.
Their first marketing idea was a slingshot; they had been using one to hurl meat to their pet falcons to train them. After buying a power saw from Sears, Roebuck & Company with a $7 down payment, they started making slingshots in Mr. Knerr’s parents’ garage and selling them by mail order through magazines like Field and Stream. The name Wham-O came from their interpretation of the noise a slingshot made.
Mr. Knerr and Mr. Melin focused at first on sporting goods rather than toys, stressing unusual items like crossbows, boomerangs and tomahawks. The two were so informal about their business, they claimed not to know which one was president and which one was executive vice president. (Mr. Knerr was president.)
The beginning of their breakthrough came in 1955 when they bumped into Walter Frederick Morrison selling his flying disks in a parking lot. They bought the rights to what Mr. Morrison called Pluto Platters. Ed Headrick, Wham-O’s research and development man, added aerodynamic details like the rings surrounding the top.
Many accounts trace the Frisbee name to college students, especially at Yale (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org), who played catch with pie tins made by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Conn. In a 2002 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Kerr said it was a coincidence that Wham-O chose the same name. He said the name came from a comic-strip character named Mr. Frisbie.
Mr. Knerr and Mr. Melin came up with the idea for the Hula Hoop after encountering a wooden hoop used in exercise classes in Australia. Their epiphany came when a friend from Australia showed them how to gyrate their hips to spin the thing.
In 1982, Mr. Melin persuaded Mr. Knerr to sell Wham-O to the Kransco Group Companies for $12 million. It was later sold to Mattel (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/mattel_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org), which then sold it to an investors’ group.
Mr. Knerr is survived by his wife, Dorothy; his daughters, Melody Knerr and Lori Gregory; a son, Chuck; a stepson, Richard Enright; a stepdaughter, Jeanne Stokes; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Melin died in 2002.
Not all of Mr. Knerr’s brainstorms succeeded. Among them were mail-order mink coats for $9.95, a $119 do-it-yourself bomb shelter and Instant Fish, an African import whose egg-laying ability could not keep up with product orders.
An attempt in 1982 to reintroduce Hula Hoops — this time with a peppermint scent wafting from the ring — went nowhere.