Where
the Frisbee First Flew
The Untold Story of
the Flying Disc's Origin
50 Years Ago in SLO
BY JEFF McMAHON
Two
men held a circle of plastic over a heater in a San Luis Obispo garage in
1948, trying to mold a lip onto the disc's down-turned edge. One of those
men would be hailed as the inventor of the Frisbee. The other would die
unknown, just as he began to fight for a share of the credit and millions
in royalties the Frisbee generated.
Walter
Frederick Morrison came to Warren Franscioni in 1947, looking for work.
Both men had been Army Air Corps pilots in World War II. Maj. Franscioni
served with the Air Transport Service in India and China; Lt. Morrison flew
a fighter in 58 missions over Italy before being shot down and held in Stalag
13, Germany's infamous prison camp.
Franscioni's
parents lived in Paso Robles, where his father had been mayor, so he settled
after the war in San Luis Obispo. He founded a butane company as his father
had done in Paso. He built a home on Conejo Avenue, in a neighborhood developing
near San Luis High School, and he opened the Franscioni and Davis Butane
Co. office at 884 Broad St., across Broad from Mission College Prep.
"I
first met Fred Morrison in late 1947," Franscioni wrote in a 1973 letter.
"He was a struggling World War II veteran trying to build a home for
his family at Baywood Park, a developing residential area just outside San
Luis Obispo, California.
"At
that time, I was attempting to establish a bottle gas business with a partner,
George Davis, in San Luis Obispo. We needed someone to assist in the installation
of home heating appliances, and Fred went to work for us."
The
bottled gas business moved too slowly in postwar SLO to sustain three men
and their families. So Franscioni and Morrison dreamed up an enterprise
on the side.
For
decades kids had played catch with metal pie tins. The sport grew in popularity
during the Depression, and soldiers spread it across the country during
the war.
The
game had a few drawbacks. The tins made a shrill noise, and if you didn't
catch them just right, they stung. After a few crash landings they could
crack or develop sharp edges that cut fingers.
Morrison
and Franscioni thought of casting them in plastic, a material proliferated
by wartime industry. Morrison took credit for the idea in later interviews,
but Franscioni said they thought of it together.
"I
do know that when we compared some of our past experiences at sailing things,
it came out plastics," Franscioni wrote.
It
seems like a simple idea today, but Morrison and Franscioni broke new ground.
And after 49 years of improvements, the Frisbee has diverged little from
their first plastic interpretation of a pie tin.
"People
were throwing paint can lids and paper plates and pie pans throughout history,
since they were invented," said Victor Malafronte, a Frisbee historian
in Alameda. "The first plastic disc was that Flyin' Saucer in 1948."
Morrison
and Franscioni used a lathe to carve their first model out of Tenite, a
hard cellulose material now used in toothbrush handles and eyeglass frames.
That disc confirmed the aerodynamics of the toy, but it shattered on landing.
"I
tackled the job of working up a design that would transform the pie-tin
shape into what we believed would be the best configuration of an injection-molded
Flyin' Saucer," Franscioni wrote.
Franscioni's
daughter, Coszette Eneix, remembers her father and Morrison working in the
basement of their Conejo Avenue home.
"I
remember one time--I was like 5--I remember standing in the basement downstairs,
and I remember over the water heater they were trying to mold this plastic
thing to try to get a lip on it," Eneix said.
Newspapers
had coined the term "flying saucer" less than a year earlier when
a pilot reported seeing disc-shaped objects skipping through the air above
the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest. The Roswell incident in
June 1947 fueled the flying saucer craze. Witnesses in Roswell, N.M., reported
seeing the bodies of aliens at a UFO crash site.
Franscioni
and Morrison named the new toy to capitalize on the publicity.
"Hundreds
of flying saucers are scheduled to invade San Luis Obispo in the near future,"
the Telegram-Tribune reported in 1948. "Two local men, pooling resources
after the words 'flying saucers' shocked the world a year ago, have invented
a new, patented plastic toy shaped like the originally reported saucer."
People
have purchased more than 200 million Frisbees in the last 50 years, Malafronte
estimates, more than baseballs, footballs, and basketballs combined. Those
booming sales, however, began with a whimper. In 1948, people didn't know
what to make of the Flyin' Saucer.
Morrison
and Franscioni formed a company called Partners in Plastic, or Pipco, based
in SLO. They contracted with Southern California Plastic Co. in Glendale
to manufacture Flyin' Saucers for about 25 cents each. They sold them for
$1 through outlets like Woolworth and Disneyland.
"We
soon found the item was a dead issue on the counter," Franscioni wrote,
"which prompted our offer to demonstrate in the store. Woolworth put
Fred and me in a cage to protect the customers. It worked, but not for long.
We soon realized the only place to demonstrate was outdoors."
Morrison
and his wife traveled to county fairs to hawk the flying disc. Franscioni
sometimes joined them, Eneix said, but he usually remained in SLO, handling
national sales and keeping Pipco's books.
The
demonstrations won people's attention. They hadn't seen anything fly like
the disc, which remained aloft long after gravity would have pulled a ball
back to earth.
Some
observers thought the disc followed an invisible wire, and Morrison capitalized
on that notion. He offered the disc for free if customers paid $1 for the
invisible wire.
Teaching
people how to throw the disc became another challenge. Americans seem born
to the art of Frisbee throwing today, but it required a new skill in 1948.
"By
running through the instructions you will see that we repeatedly point out
that an easy smooth snap of the wrist is all that is necessary," Franscioni
wrote.
Flyin'
Saucers came with directions urging people not to throw the discs too hard
or hold them too tight, and to launch them "in exactly the same manner
as sailing your hat onto a hook."
Franscioni
and Morrison's early marketing efforts occasionally backfired. A Disneyland
employee demonstrating the Flyin' Saucer accidentally overshot a fence and
hit a woman in the head. She sued, and Disney halted its demonstrations.
Then
Morrison and Franscioni struck a deal with Al Capp, who agreed to include
the Flyin' Saucer in his "Li'l Abner" cartoon strip. That strip
appeared in national newspapers sometime around 1950. Franscioni and Morrison
printed "Li'l Abner" inserts and packaged them with their Flyin'
Saucers to capitalize on the publicity.
The
inserts infuriated Capp, who felt they exceeded the terms of their agreement.
Capp threatened to sue and demanded $5,000 in compensation.
"I
was really hurt. How could Li'l Abner do this to my daddy?" Eneix said.
"That was a hunk of change that put them down. That was quite a bit
of money back then."
Franscioni
and Morrison were already struggling to meet the cost of casting the original
dies for the Flyin' Saucer. The Capp payoff devastated Pipco.
Franscioni
borrowed $2,500 from his mother and $2,500 from his mother-in-law, Eneix
said, and the demise of the Flyin' Saucer began. Eneix and her sister went
door to door in SLO selling the discs for 25 cents. Today, collectors will
pay $500 for an original Pipco Flyin' Saucer.
The
Franscioni and Davis Butane Co. crashed at about the same time as Pipco.
In 1950, Walter Franscioni had to sell the Conejo Avenue home where the
Frisbee was born. He moved to Greenville, worked as a trucker, and applied
for reactivation in the Air Force.
"I
remember us losing our home and how hard that was," Eneix said. "Korea
was happening then, and my father then applied for being recalled back into
the service, but he continued trying to get the Flyin' Saucer thing to go."
The
Air Force moved the Franscionis to South Dakota in 1952. Morrison moved
to Los Angeles, where he worked as a building inspector, and the inventors
of the Flyin' Saucer drifted apart. Southern California Plastic Co. continued
to produce the discs, and Morrison continued to sell them.
Eneix
keeps folders full of yellowing letters and old business records to document
what happened next. Some of those records show that Morrison began manufacturing
his own flying disc on the side.
Morrison
set up a new company, American Trends, redesigned the disc to make it look
more like a flying saucer, and called it the Pluto Platter. Morrison began
selling the Pluto Platter while still accepting sales commissions on the
Flyin' Saucer, according to Ed Kennedy, the president of Southern California
Plastic Co.
"We
had just found out that Fred Morrison had another die built on the Flyin'
Saucer and was merchandising the product under the name of Pluto's Platter,"
Kennedy wrote in a 1957 letter to Franscioni. "During the time that
he was having the saucer made, he was also accepting sales commissions from
the company here."
Kennedy
accused Morrison of trying to steal Flyin' Saucer accounts by offering Pluto
Platters at a lower cost.
"In
my opinion, Fred acted completely unfairly on this entire thing," Kennedy
wrote, "and we certainly will never do business with him again."
Southern
California Plastic Co. severed its relationship with Morrison and contacted
a patent attorney. The question of patent violations never went to court,
however, and has never been resolved.
Morrison
was demonstrating his Pluto Platter in a Los Angeles parking lot in 1955
when Rich Knerr and Spud Melin spotted the unusual flying object.
Knerr
and Melin had founded their own toy company back in 1948, the year Franscioni
and Morrison were developing the Flyin' Saucer. Knerr and Melin had one
product, a wooden slingshot. They named their company for the sound the
slingshot's pellets made on impact--Wham-O.
Morrison
signed a contract with Wham-O, and Knerr and Melin sold the Pluto Platter
with a marketing expertise Morrison and Franscioni never showed. Knerr came
up with the new name for the disc.
Knerr
was visiting East Coast college campuses in the mid-1950s, giving away Pluto
Platters to seed market demand. At Yale he encountered students tossing
metal pie tins and yelling "Frisbie!" the way golfers yell "Fore!"
Historians
have traced that tradition to a Bridgeport, Conn., baker named William Russell
Frisbie. In 1871 Frisbie moved to Bridgeport to manage the local branch
of the Olds Baking Co. He eventually bought the bakery and renamed it Frisbie
Pie Co.
Frisbee
historian Malafronte believes truck drivers for the company were the first
to toss Frisbie Pie tins on the loading docks during idle times. The tins
bore the words "Frisbie's Pies" and had six small holes in the
center, in a star pattern, that hummed when the tin flew.
The
sport moved to Eastern colleges, where students shouted "Frisbie!"
to warn people of incoming pie tins. A sport developed and took on the name
"Frisbie-ing." Knerr took the word home to Wham-O, misspelled
it "Frisbee," and registered it as a trademark. In 1958, Morrison's
Pluto Platter became the Wham-O Frisbee.
Southern
California Plastic Co. continued to make Flyin' Saucers for Disneyland and
a few other outlets. It handled sales and mailed royalty checks to Franscioni
until the mid-1960s, when he headed to Vietnam.
Many
American homes have housed a Frisbee, but Coszette Eneix's home is not among
them.
"Every
time I see a Frisbee I just want to cringe," she said. "I get
angry inside. It shouldn't be called Frisbee. It isn't Frisbee. How come
they're calling it Frisbee? That's not right. It's Flyin' Saucer."
Eneix
hasn't decided whether to use her files of yellowing papers in a lawsuit
or in a book, but she wants justice for her father.
"I
want it in the history books, as it comes down, that my father was there,
not Fred Morrison alone," she said.
"When
you read about the history of the Frisbee, you always hear Fred Morrison.
Fred Morrison did this. Fred Morrison did that. Bullshit. Excuse my language.
Bullshit. It was Warren Franscioni and Fred Morrison. It was a partnership.
I think they should have equal billing."
The
International Frisbee Hall of Fame in Lake Linden, Mich., reserves its primary
listing for Morrison.
"Fred
Morrison, Inventor of the Frisbee," it says. "Walter F. (Fred)
Morrison has provided pleasure to millions of people throughout the world.
He was the first person to envision the creation of a plastic disc to be
used as a substitute for a ball in a game of catch."
Wham-O
went on to market the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball, the Water Wiggle, and other
toys, but Frisbee remained its most profitable product. In 1977, 20 years
after Wham-O began selling Frisbees, it generated up to 50 percent of the
company's annual sales. At the time, Wham-O estimated it had sold 100 million
flying discs.
Morrison
told the Los Angeles Times in 1977 he had made about $1 million in royalties.
Nearly
all written histories of the Frisbee attribute its invention to Morrison.
Stancil E.D. Johnson, a Pacific Grove psychiatrist, may have been the first
to mention Warren Franscioni in a footnote in his 1975 book, "Frisbee."
Johnson
heard about Franscioni from Ed Kennedy, the president of the Southern California
Plastic Co. In 1973, Johnson contacted Franscioni, who was then an Air Force
colonel stationed in Oslo, Norway. He asked Franscioni to write down his
memories of the flying disc's origin.
Franscioni
sent Johnson one letter in August 1973.
"I
have had time to evaluate my initial concern about whether your book might
interfere in any future legal proceedings about the subject," Franscioni
wrote. "I have come to the conclusion that your book, if based upon
the facts, would not."
Franscioni
argues that he designed the first Flyin' Saucer, not Morrison, that he paid
for the initial mold with his own money, and that the two men jointly developed
the idea of casting it in plastic.
Franscioni
began a second letter to Johnson in 1974, but he never completed it. He
died of a heart attack at age 57.
"Fred
Morrison never wanted to admit this," Johnson said. "Franscioni
died and never was able to come back and get his share of the profits."
Franscioni
might have acted earlier. Ed Kennedy urged him to take legal action against
Morrison as early as 1957.
"Other
people were asking my father to do something--stop him, sue him, stop him,"
Eneix said, "but we were in South Dakota. My father was getting his
career going again as an officer in the Air Force, and that was taking a
lot of his time. And I think my mom was leery of putting more money into
this thing."
In
1957, the Frisbee had not yet made its millions. The rights to the toy hardly
seemed worth the cost of a lawsuit.
"There
was a lot of disappointment in the '50s, and they were hurt, really hurt,"
Eneix said.
"So
we all started quieting down and not talking about it. That's what we do
in my family. We don't talk about it. Then we didn't fly the Flyin' Saucer
much anymore on picnics. It was too painful to keep remembering it because
we were losing it."
Morrison,
77, now calls himself "Walt" and lives near Monroe, Utah, a town
of 1,700 people in the Sevier River valley. He owned a motel there and operated
it with his third wife until he retired three years ago. Morrison has an
old pickup truck, but he rarely drives it into town.
"He
lives in a house in the country and seems to enjoy life," said Mark
Fullenbaugh, publisher of the Richfield Reaper. "I haven't seen him
in person in about six months. You don't see him out much, so I can't tell
you much more than that about him."
Morrison
declined to be interviewed for this story.
"Well,
I'd like to be a nice guy and say yes, but I'm so tired of this shit,"
Morrison said.
"It's
been done so many times, so many ways, that I just don't do it anymore.
I'm an old man now and I just haven't got time for this. I want to just
sit back in my chair and sleep."
Morrison
has always been "cagey" about the facts of the Frisbee's birth,
according to Malafronte, who met Morrison at Frisbee tournaments.
"I
had asked Fred about his partner, and he owns up to it," Malafronte
said. "The problem is, I think Fred has a lot of stuff he can lose
and nothing to gain by talking."
Meanwhile,
Mattel Corp. is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Frisbee this year,
even though the plastic flying disc turns 50 next year.
Mattel,
the world's largest toy company, bought Wham-O in 1994. It dates the Frisbee's
official birth as 1957, when Wham-O first marketed Morrison's Pluto Platter.
Mattel
has no knowledge of plastic flying discs that may have existed before 1957,
said Mattel spokeswoman Sara Rosales, nor of their inventors.
Jeff
McMahon hurls amazing whirling adjectives for New Times.
