Flip! How The Frisbee Took Flight by Margaret Muirhead

Flip! uncovers the story behind the invention of the Frisbee.

One story is that the Frisbee originated out of Yale University. Joseph P. Frisbie whose father was a baker,  delivered desserts to the university.  The left-over tin pie plates, stamped Frisbie's Pies were soon being tossed around on campus by students!

In 1937, Fred Morrison and his girlfriend Lu were in the backyard of his home in Southern California after a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Someone picked up a tin popcorn lid and began flipping it through the air. This was so much fun that Fred and Lu became hooked on flipping their tin lid around until it became too dented to use. So they switched to pie plates and then cake pans! Fred and Lu had never heard of the Frisbie Pie plates but one day they would!

Later, while Fred and Lu were playing with their plate on the beach in California, another beach goer offered to buy it from Fred for a quarter. Fred realized he was on to something. Soon his new business venture of selling pans at parks and beaches allowed him to buy an engagement ring for Lu and in 1939 they were married.

With World War II, Fred enlisted as an Army Air Corps pilot but he continued to think about the "flying cake-pans". The post-war years saw intense public interest in unidentified flying objects, UFOs because of the reports of an alien aircraft crashing at Roswell, New Mexico. This got Fred thinking about how he might connect his "flying cake-pans" to the UFOs!

He decided to make his cake pans out of light, brightly coloured plastic and with help and financial backing of a friend, Warren Franscioni,  renamed them The Amazing Flyin-Saucer. He thought he had a hit, but the plastic was brittle in cold temperatures, meaning the flyin-saucers broke.

In 1955, Fred remarketed his product as the Pluto Platters, this time made out of a more pliable material. With the help of Lu, he sold them at fairs, dressed in a spacesuit costume. The success of the Pluto Platters captured the interest of Wham-O, a California toy company. They bought the rights to the design with the intent of marketing them all over the country.

But when they got to the New England area, they noticed that students there were already playing with discs but they called them Frisbies. Wham-O decided to change the name of their discs to Frisbees and the rest is history!

Discussion

Who knew the strange and convoluted history of the Frisbee, that plastic disc you can toss around? In this enjoyable picture book, Margaret Muirhead tells the story of how the Frisbee came to be with a delightful touch of humour. 

Although several people appeared to have the idea of tossing a plate or pan around for fun, it was, as Muirhead suggests in her Author's Note at the back, Fred Morrison's entrepreneurial spirit that took an neat idea and made it into a business. It is this quality that Muirhead highlights in her book, that persistence can pay off.

Helping the story along are the colourful, humorous 1950's and 1960's retro artwork, by illustrator, Adam Gustavson.

Book Details

Flip! How The Frisbee Took Flight by Margaret Muirhead
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.