There can’t be many people reading this who have never played with a hula hoop (that’s the big type that you spin around your hips,) a frisbee or a power ball – you know – one of those little rubber balls that are so bouncy that you tend to lose them outdoors in five minutes flat, writes our Teen Blogger Rhian.
These were all really simple toys that were identified and produced by a man called Richard Knerr, an American who established the “Wham-O” toy company in Pasadena.

In 1958, he noticed students entertaining themselves by throwing spinning pie cases to one other at a time when UFO’ s were very much part of the popular imagination and so, he developed the Frisbee, which he initially christened the “Pluto Platter”.

Over the next three decades, he went on to sell 100 million of them.

It wasn’t his greatest success though, that was the Hula Hoop, which was originally bought to Los Angeles as a rattan hoop, by a travelling Australian business man. Once Knerr got the hang of twirling it around his hips, he went on to manufacture 20,000 a day and it became one of the most enduring fads ever.

His third great toy was the power ball and if you already know how bouncy they are imagine this; in 1965 somebody accidentally dropped a big version of one from the twenty third floor of a skyscraper. It bounced all the way back up to the fifteenth floor before descending again to land on a parked car which was damaged beyond repair by the impact!

Poor old Richard Knerr passed away last week, hence the reason I know all this stuff after reading his obituary, but think of all the fun he gave to children and adults alike.

That’s not a bad way to be remembered.

Rhian is the Shropshire Star’s Teen Blogger, commenting on a wide range of issues from a teenager’s point of view.