Today in History—December 26: The Pluto Platter

Written and fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

On December 26, 1967, Edward Headrick patented the modern “flying saucer” toy. The toy’s story, however, began long before Headrick entered the picture. Starting in the 1870s, college students in New Haven, Connecticut, played a game with pie tins that they had gotten from a local bakery, throwing them (empty, of course) to each other.

Fast-forward to the 1930s. Walter Frederick Morrison and his girlfriend were tossing a popcorn tin lid back and forth on a California beach. The couple continued playing their game at outings by tossing a cake tin back and forth (sounding familiar?) until someone paid them 25 cents (about $6 today) for their scraped-together toy. Morrison was soon traveling across southern California to show off his “Flyin’ Cake Pans.” A lesson in branding, that’s for sure. Warren Franscioni joined Morrison as a business partner, and the two began selling a plastic version of the disc at fairs and events. They didn’t, however, find much success, so they parted ways in 1950.

Fun Fact

The flying saucer’s inventor, Fred Morrison, disliked the name “Frisbee,” going so far as to call it a “horror.”

In 1957 Morrison sold the rights to his newly rebranded “Pluto Platter” (a shout-out to the unidentified flying objects that had taken over the public’s imagination). The buyer? Wham-O. The California toy company eventually decided to name the disc “Frisbee.” Remember that pie company in the Northeast? That was the famed Frisbie pie company. The intentional misspelling helped Wham-O avoid copyright laws. (However, Wham-O cofounder Richard Knerr has denied this story, stating that the idea came from a Mr. Frisbie comic strip). That’s when Headrick (also called “Steady Ed”) entered the picture. The Wham-O designer patented the modern Frisbee, which he called a “flying saucer,” with its signature raised ridges, in 1967. That being said, anyone up for a game of Ultimate Frisbee?