
This Legendary Connecticut Creation Debuted 68 Years Ago Today
Did you know that the name of one of the most popular toys in the world was inspired by a group of kids playing around with pie tins in Connecticut in the 1950's?

William Russel Frisbie started the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport in 1871, and each of his pie tins were branded with his last name. Pie tins last a long time, I think I still have a few from the Pie Plate in Waterbury from the 1980's. Well, it took nearly 80 years of children tossing around old Frisbie pie plates for that moment of inspiration to strike.
Exactly 68 years ago today, January 23, 1957, the Wham-O Pluto Platter, a flying disc mass produced on an assembly line, went into production. According to todayincthistory.com, shortly after the Pluto Platters started to be introduced to the public, a couple of Wham-O employees on a trip through Connecticut noticed children tossing empty pie plates to each other while yelling out 'Frisbie' when the pie plate flew off course.
The employees went back to Wham-O with this knowledge, and after a redesign and refinement, re-introduced the Wham-O Pluto Platter as a 'Frisbee'. Why the 'EE' instead of the 'IE'? Potential lawsuits. Wham-O sold hundreds of millions of them before selling the rights to the product to Mattel in the 1990's. Frisbee golf, one of the most popular flying disc sports to this day, started showing up in Texas and Georgia in the early 1960's. There are plenty of disc golf courses in Connecticut today, here's a list from idisc.com.
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