Ask for It by Name!

Poor William Russell Frisbie. When he moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut to manage a new bakery in 1871, he never dreamt that someday half the dogs in America would be chasing his legacy across the nation’s lawns.

Mr. Frisbie was a good baker; so good, in fact, that within a few years he had bought the bakery and established the Frisbie Pie Company, selling pies all across New England. Frisbie pies were especially popular among the students at Yale University in New Haven in the 1920s, and soon Yale dormitories were awash in empty Frisbie Pie tins. College students being expert time-wasters, it wasn’t long before the Yalies discovered that the Frisbie tins, if flung with a spinning motion, would waft gracefully through the air to be caught and returned by a fellow scholar. Since the tins were made of metal, however, it was advisable that the recipient know in advance that the pie tin had been launched, so the cry of “Frisbie!” was adopted as the game’s equivalent of “Fore!” in golf.

Within a few years, the game of “Frisbie” had spread far beyond Yale. In 1948, a California building inspector and inventor named Fred Morrison began to manufacture and market the first flying disc made of plastic as the “Frisbee,” most likely modifying the spelling to avoid legal problems with the Frisbie Pie folks. In 1955, Morrison joined the Wham-O toy company, and in 1957 Wham-O began to market his disc as the “Pluto Platter,” neatly avoiding the trademark question entirely while also capitalizing on the national obsession with UFOs.

By 1958, however, the venerable Frisbie Pie Company had gone out of business, and Wham-O quickly renamed their disc the Frisbee and trademarked the name. Frisbee-mania followed and continues to this day, and while Wham-O won’t say exactly how many Frisbees are sold every year, they do slyly estimate that the number is probably greater than sales of footballs, baseballs and basketballs combined.