The Sweet History of Frisbee Revealed!

The legend begins in 1871 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a man named William Russell Frisbie founded a pie bakery. The busines grew and by 1905, Frisbies were flying off store shelves all over New England, foreshadowing what was to become of the family name.

With business brisk in 1915, the Frisbies built a new, larger bakery in Bridgeport where factory workers reportedly broke up their workday by having a game of catch with the pie tins. Sure it could be a bit dangerous—flying metal tends to be—but it was undoubtedly fun. The news of flying pie tins spread to nearby Yale University, where one can imagine the typical campus clamor of spring pervaded by a new sound; the noisy clang of metal pie tins hitting the ground. Cries of “Frisbie!” could also be heard, like the warning “Fore!” in golf, as errant throws sailed out of control.

Walter “Fred” Morrison and Warren Franscioni seized the marketing possibility of a plastic flying disk in the mid 1940s. They called their first version The Flyin’ Saucer and used the hot cartoon property of the day (Lil’ Abner) to try and help sell it. It failed and the two entrepreneurs parted ways. Fred Morrison then launched his own updated version in 1955, renaming it the Pluto Platter Flying Saucer. It was this version of the disk that caught the eye of Spud Melin and Dick Knerr at Wham-O, and the rest, as they say, is Frisbee history. Wham-O changed the spelling from Frisbie to Frisbee and went on to make it one of the most popular toys of all time, selling over 200 million of them since 1957.

Summer’s here and The Boston Phoenix.Com is recommending that you get your piece of the pie in this great article.