When I ran across this postcard of a Friesbie’s Pie truck, I wondered if that was the inspiration for the name of the Frisbee. It rather made sense, but then you never know. So I headed to the Frisbee Wikipedia page, and sure enough:
In June 1957, Wham-O co-founders Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin gave the disc the brand name “Frisbee” after learning that college students were calling the Pluto Platter by that term,[10] which was derived from the Connecticut-based pie manufacturer Frisbie Pie Company,[11] a supplier of pies to Yale University, where students had started a campus craze tossing empty pie tins stamped with the company’s logo—the way that Morrison and his wife had in 1937.[6]
Walter Morrison was the true inventor of the Frisbee, and he started out by throwing a popcorn can lid on the beach after Thanksgiving dinner in 1937, in California (natch). After he started making them out of plastic, the device went through a number of names before it became the Frisbee, thanks to those Yale University students that were familiar with Frisbie’s pies.
Just one question:
Can anyone identify the truck?
I’ll try Diamond T, about ’34.
I was confused when I first heard the term Frisbee sometime around 1970. In our family we just called it a flying saucer, or occasionally by its brand name, the Pluto Platter. I was curious so I just checked Wikipedia and in fact they were branded Flyin’ Saucer in the fifties before becoming Pluto Platter for just a few years, then Frisbee.
Since pie and coffee make a good breakfast, I thought I’d mention another breakfast connection with flying toys that I learned about when we lived near Stanford University. The Aerobie flying ring, which is arguably easier to fly than a disc, was developed by a Stanford professor who went on to design and productize the Aeropress coffee maker.
G.M.C. Truck’s Joe Frisbie knows the the most economical to run!
Found a picture or GMC Advert claiming Joe Frisbie knew this…
on flyingdiscmuseum.com
The had a different color scheme so they might have been older… Maybe they just had a repaint?
Having grown up just north of New Haven, it was always a Frisbee. I recall the pie company connection. Too young to have seen that truck, however!
Those are older trucks. But the featured one might be a GMC, but I’m leaning towards something else. I just don’t have the time to look into that right now.
No idea on the truck, but I’ll throw out my Frisbee story.
Mid 60s, I’m a California kid, very familiar with Frisbees. Folks split up, my Dad moved to England. On a visit over there, some ex pat friends of his came over, along with a son about my age, with a Frisbee. We started playing with it, neither of us masters, but familiar with it. Pretty seen we had the whole neighborhood watching in awe. England, being England, nobody asked to join in so nobody knew how easy it was. We just put on a demonstration, which in the states would have been just two kids playing.
International.