You’d think this toy had its origins in the Fifties as plastic was getting rolled out into the wonder substance for everything: toys, car parts, food storage, etc. Oddly, name comes from a baker in 1871 called The Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, CT because university students would repurpose the pie tins as flying discs. They’d allegedly yell “Frisbie” as they launched them at each other. Wow! So people were morons well before cornhole.
Decades later it was perfected into its first plastic incarnation in 1948 as the Flying Saucer given UFOs being all the rage. One of the two guys behind the Flying Saucer sold it to Wham-O in 1955 as the Pluto Platter and the toy company rolled them out on this day 65 years ago. They gave it a catchier name in 1958…Frisbee, to go along with Wham-O’s other hit toys you can’t forget: the Hula-Hoop, Super Ball (not made of an egg yolk and vinegar as my brother learned as a kid) and the Water Wiggle. I’m not sure if the misspelling was intentional since we live an era of pirates doing this constantly to dodge copyright filters. A decade later, the Frisbee was modified one last time to strengthen its trademark by having a band of raised ridges on the top to stabilize flight. I should ask someone better versed in Physics to tell me if this is true. It sounds more like something to make Frisbee more defensible in a court case than to improve its toyetic nature.
The Frisbee would go on to be a big part of Austin’s Hippie culture since there’s a Frisbee golf course near my house. It runs through Wells Branch and some days, you can see people waiting to tee off at a “hole,” on a bridge closer to I-35. I have no idea how it works nor do I really care. To me, Hippies found a way to make an incredibly boring activity which is really Eco-Terrorism purported by the Rich and Political Caste, and elevated it to a new level of shittyness. I can see a match between Nigel from The Young Ones v. Bill Clinton while they share reefer.