Wham-O creators Arthur "Spud" Melin and Richard Knerr
Richard Knerr and Spud Melin had been friends since high school. They'd gone to college together and opened a used car business together. But it was their love of falconrey that actually sparked a chain of events that would lead to the Frisbee, Hula-Hoop, and the Slip 'n' Slide.
Richard and Spud would shoot bits of meat into the air for their falcons to grab. To do this, they fashioned their own sling-shot. One day, a man approached them wanting to get a hold of a sling shot like theirs.... the rest, as they say, is history. The partners went to Sears and got a saw, and then some lumber and strips of rubber. They put ads in magazines in comic books for their sling shots, and earned enough capital to make more items.
And make more items they did. The breadth and scope of their products is simply too much to cover in a post. They sold any odd thing that came to mind - most were amazingly bad failures, but a select few became national crazes. The Hula-Hoop nearly bankrupted them, until a year later (1958) the fad swept the country. Other items like the "mink navel stole" (a quarter sized patch to cover up women's belly buttons) never quite caught on.
Here's a look at some of the products sold by this one-of-a-kind company, Wham-O!