Hermes
In Ancient Greek mythology, Hermes was a god, the son of Zeus and Maia. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, known for his inventiveness, and also the god of both merchants and thieves. Hermes is usually represented wearing winged sandals and carrying a staff entwined with serpents. (If Hermes sounds familiar, it’s because the Romans later called him Mercury.)
In 1828 an inventive modern Hermes arrived in Paris from his native Germany. Thierry Hermes first went into business making saddles and harnesses, and within a few years became known for the high quality of his products. As the Hermes enterprise expanded under Thierry’s descendants and added European royalty to its clientele, leather garments and luggage were added, and in 1928 Hermes began buying silk scarves to sell along with their clothing line. The scarves were so popular that Hermes decided to design their own, and today Hermes scarves are probably the firm’s most famous product. But the firm also still produces around 400 hand-tooled saddles every year.
Hush Puppies
Even shoes can be late bloomers in America.
In 1958, Wolverine World Wide, a Michigan company that had been making shoes since 1883, was about to debut a new line of suede lace-up shoes with a crepe sole designed for comfort. The only detail missing was a good name for the shoe. Company sales manager Jim Muir happened to be visiting a friend in Tennessee one day, and noticed that his host quieted his barking dogs by tossing them bits of fried cornmeal. Such fried morsels, Muir learned, were called “hush puppies” in the South (”hush” being a verb meaning “to quiet”), and were also commonly served as a side dish at the dinner table.
In a moment of branding genius, Muir remembered that human feet had long been known in slang as “dogs,” and that someone with tired and aching feet would often say that “My dogs are barking.” The new comfortable shoe designed to soothe tired feet would henceforth be known as “Hush Puppies.”
The first Hush Puppies model, the Duke (a popular dog’s name) was introduced in 1958, and subsequent early styles also featured canine names such as Toby and Bozo.
Hush Puppies were popular in the 1960s, but by the late 1970s had come to be considered nerdy, associated with cardigan sweaters and aging relatives. Even Wolverine’s chief executive joked that Hush Puppies were the shoes that elderly widows put on their husbands in the casket, and by 1990 Wolverine was playing down its own brand.
All that changed, at least briefly, in 1994, when Tom Hanks wore Hush Puppies in the hit film Forrest Gump. Suddenly Hush Puppies were a fashion sensation and even celebrities had to put their names on waiting lists for the shoes.
By the late 1990s, however, the Hollywood bloom had faded and Hush Puppies sales slumped again. But there’s always the possibility that this old dog may have a few more tricks, and lives, left.
Frisbee
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.