WHAM

Balls, hoops, slingshots are some of the oldest known toys. Also some of the simplest. No batteries, computer skills or assembly required.

But make them out of sturdy polyethylene, color them boldly, and put the name WHAM-O on the package, and presto! Everything old is new again. And for baby boomers who were the original target audience, irresistible.

"We want everything we do to be fun," said Todd Richards, president of WHAM-O, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.

Hula Hoops, Super Balls, Slip 'n Slides, Boogie Boards — above all Frisbees — are just a few of the WHAM-O products, thought of as passing fads, that have proven remarkably durable. They occupy a unique niche in the toy industry — somewhere between novelty, plaything and sports item.

"I would say we're not a traditional toy company," Richards said.

WHAM-O may be a bit of an anachronism, in an age of high-tech toys and video games. But that's part of the appeal of the brand, Richards said.

"It goes back to what makes us so unique," he said. "Nothing comes with instructions. There are no rules. It's up to the users to come up with a way to play with it. It's amazing to see all the things that have come out of Hula Hoops, Frisbees, Boogie Boards."

Frisbee — the most iconic WHAM-O product — has lent itself to all sorts of things since it came on the market in 1957: Disc Golf, Double Disc Court, dog Frisbee competitions. Not to mention Ultimate Frisbee, developed in 1968 by some Maplewood High School students, and now a national sport with more than 5 million players in the U.S.

And Hula Hoops, once the classic example of a short-lived craze, have had several revivals since they were officially declared dead in 1959 — most recently as a piece of exercise equipment.

"In the mid to late 2000s, they came back to life in the fitness industry," Richards said. "There was a huge fad of teachers using Hula Hoops in fitness."

Teachers might not have been so delighted with the first WHAM-O product to come on the market in 1948: a slingshot.

Two University of Southern California graduates, Richard Knerr and Arthur "Spud" Melin, had tested out their new — which is to say, old — toy, using neighborhood kids.

"The legend holds that every time the kids hit the target, they would go 'Whammo!' " Richards said. It was, for Knerr and Melin, a lightbulb moment. "They said, 'Wait a second, that's the name!' "

The success of the WHAM-O Slingshot put Knerr and Melin on the alert for other simple toys that could be given a modern twist.

"These were two guys who were always looking for something different," Richards said. "The loved to travel, go to other cultures, find new things. That was their marketing magic, making those things into fads."

Their most spectacular early success, in 1958, was the Hula Hoop.

Australians had been swiveling bamboo hoops around their waists for years. But made of Marlex plastic, and advertised on TV, WHAM-O Hula Hoops became an international craze. Some 25 million were sold in four months. Then, just as suddenly, it was over. Distributors had warehouses full of things they couldn't give away.

But Knerr and Melin had other fish to fry. In 1957, Walter Frederick "Fred" Morrison, a pilot from Utah, sold them the idea for what he called his "Pluto Platter": a flying saucer-like disc.

College students had been whirling such discs back and forth for years. Particularly at Yale — where the tins of the local Frisbie Pie Company were considered aerodynamically perfect.

When Knerr, visiting a college campus, heard students tossing the tins and yelling 'Frisbie!' as they did so, he had another 'aha!' moment. The Pluto Platter became the Frisbee.

"WHAM-O developed it, marketed it, turned it into a product," Richards said.

Part of their savvy was understanding their audience. When it became clear that the Frisbee was regarded, especially by teens, as a species of sporting good rather than a toy, they responded with a range of models.

"The quality went up as the price went up," Richards said. "You had World Class, Ultimate, Freestyle. They had slightly different head shapes, distinctive weights. Some had a larger diameter."

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The company had other hits, too. Who can forget Silly String, Hacky Sack, the Ornithopter? Not to mention the Super Ball, made of a new kind of synthetic rubber, developed in 1964, that made it freakishly bouncy.

Super Balls were so ubiquitous by 1967 that AFL co-founder Lamar Hunt, seeing his kids play with one, was inspired to create a name for the AFL-NFL championship game: The Super Bowl. In its honor, the company dropped 10,000 Super Balls from a helicopter at Arrowhead Stadium in August 2022.

"I believe the helicopter was 300 feet up, and the balls went up to almost 200 feet on the first bounce," Richards said.

The WHAM-O style of toy — simple, active, outdoorsy — might seem like a throwback in a digital age. That's an issue the company, now a division of California's Stallion Sport, has struggled with. But in 2020 they got an unlooked-for boost from a tragic event: the pandemic.

"From March 2020 to the end of May, parents and kids were going crazy," Richards said. "Now school is on a screen. Parents are doing work on a screen. Everyone is cooped up in the house. Our products went absolutely ballistic. For 2020 our sales had an almost 30 percent increase. Categories like Slip 'N Slide and Frisbee saw a 26, 28 percent increase. In all honesty, those numbers could have been double if we had the inventory. By August 2020, warehouses were empty."

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The biggest success of all? That old warhorse, the Hula Hoop.

Sales went up 60 percent, Richards said. Not least because, during the pandemic, people had found yet another use for them. The hoops, ranging from 27 to 48 inches in diameter, were great for keeping people away.

"People were using them for social distancing," Richards said.