With every decade comes a few products that go from obscurity to talent lean must - haves — seemingly overnight . But what happens to the people who turn a new melodic theme into a menage name ? Here are eight cases .
1. RICHARD T. JAMES // THE SLINKY
During World War II , Richard T. James was a naval engineer stationed at a bag in Philadelphia . concord to legend , he knocked a torsion spring to the flooring one day and watched it keep moving , and an estimation for a plaything was suffer .
In 1945 , James manufactured 400 of whathis married woman Betty dubbed“the Slinky . ” He sold all of them after giving an in - person demonstration at Gimbels section computer storage in Philadelphia during the vacation season . Two years later , Slinkys had become a phenomenon . James moved production to a machine shop in Albany , paid for an advertising campaign , and by 1950 had racked up $ 1 billion in gross ( in today ’s dollar ) .
Then things got unearthly . The newly loaded James went through a philandering phase . To repent , he give way away huge amounts of money to evangelical Christian radical , which became sort of an addiction . He continued to donate as the Slinky fell out of fashion and revenue stalled . In 1960 , with no forewarning or explanation , hebought a one - way slate to Bolivia , allow his wife and six tiddler . Betty James believed he bring together a cult in a rural part of the land . She took over the Slinky occupation and turned it around , thanks in part to plastic and rainbow - color variation that transport children of the 1970s . Richard James pass the residual of his life story in Bolivia ; he die there in 1974 .
2. EDWARD CRAVEN WALKER // THE LAVA LAMP
Dean Hochman , Flickr //CC BY 2.0
In 1963 , Edward Craven Walker , a British war veteran who run a travel way , came acrossan unusual egg timekeeper in a pub . It was a shabu cocktail shaker full of oil and water with a light electric-light bulb beneath . A chef could clock the stewing of an egg by turning it over and learn the oil globule rise to the top , which also cast moving shadows around the way .
Inspired , Walkerspent the next 10 yearstoiling in his backyard , search for the perfect combination of oil , wax , and piddle within a halogen lamp to make what was market in the UK as the Astro Lamp and known conversationally in the U.S. as the Lava Lamp . The swirling great deal of loose and colorful globules beneath the bullet train - shaped lamp became the ultimate room appurtenance for a not bad age . Walker ’s company , Crestworth ( now Mathmos ) , sold 7 million lamps a yr by the late sixties .
But Walker ’s true heat was being an proponent for thenudistlifestyle and philosophy . Even before the Lava Lamp , he came to some renown make “ naturist ” motion picture , such asEves on Skis(1958 ) andTraveling Light(1960 ) , which boast naked underwater ballet . He set up the Bournemouth , a nudist smudge in the coastal resort township of the same name , and District Outdoor Club , a nightspot in Dorset .
Walker turn the company over to younger entrepreneurs during the Lava Lamp ’s nostalgia - inspire revitalization in the previous 1980s . He died in 2000 at the old age of 82 .
3. CHARLES HALL /// THE WATERBED
For his victor ’s projection , San Francisco State University industrial design studentCharles Hallwas tasked with creating something to improve human comfort . His first idea was a bean bag filled with gelatin and cornflour . It weighed 300 pounds and was incredibly impractical .
His second idea was good , and well - timed for the Sexual Revolution . In 1968 , Hall developed a “ waterbed , ” a bedframe filled with heated urine . He patented it as “ Liquid Support for Human Bodies . ” ally who stopped by his flat / workshop in Haight - Ashburydubbed the inventiona “ pleasance pit . ” Hall approached some furniture - makers but was plough down , so he start his own manufacturing company , sold the beds via special purchase order , anddelivered themhimself around San Francisco . Soon , influential people were buying them , including the Smothers Brothers and members of Jefferson Airplane . Hugh Hefner even had one andcovered it in Tasmanian possum fur .
But Hall did n’t become a bedding headpin , even though , by the mid-1980s , one in every five bed sell in the U.S. was a waterbed . Soon after he started selling to rock stars , cheap knockoffs flooded the market . “ We were sell a fairly expensive mathematical product when the substantial volume was in the point shops and counterculture,”Hall say . “ It was very much youth oriented , but we were n’t selling at youth prices . ”
A peaceful valet who delight monkey around and the outstanding out-of-doors , Hall disregard friends ’ advice to hire a attorney to sue the first wave of maker . So none of the furniture companies who link up in the trend thought they owed its creator a dime , partially because the concept had been described before Hall ’s patent of invention ( splendidly in Robert A. Heinlein ’s classic 1961 sci - fi novel , Stranger in a Strange Land ) . The cheap beds were blabbermouthed and uncomfortable , hotfoot the last of the fad .
In the 1980s , Hall last change his psyche and tried to get a gash of the profits made from clone waterbeds . In 1991 , he won $ 4.8 million in a patent misdemeanour case against one of the makers of higher - closing waterbeds , Intex Plastics of Long Beach .
Meanwhile , Hall moved on to the outside diversion equipment market . A company he co - founded , Basic Designs , developed the Sun Shower , a solar - heated portable rain shower in a bag for campers . He also co - founded Advanced Elements , which train paddleboards and kayak , including an inflatable boat that can fit in a gondola automobile trunk .
And , yes , he still sleeps on a waterbed — in fact there is one in each of the three place he owns .
4. GARY DAHL /// THE PET ROCK
Wikimedia Commons
More than a Cartesian product , more than a furore , the Pet Rock stick out as a pragmatic synonym for a useless idea that makes its Maker rich overnight through sheer ethnic zeitgeist .
Gary Dahl , an advertising executive , add up up with the ideain a bar in Las Gatos , California , heed to his buddies complain about “ incontinent weenie , destructive cats , excessively fecund gerbils , and vacations foiled because no one could babysit the bird , ” in the words ofone 2015 obituaryfor Dahl .
He decided to market a A-one low - care “ pet ” as a fallal item . In 1975 , he oversaw the production of a serial of cardboard pet carrier vitrine ( complete with tune holes ) that held a single fluent rock , gather from a Mexican beach , on a bed of straw . It come with a preparation manual . ( A sample : “ [ P]lace it on some old paper . The rock-and-roll will know what the report is for and will require no further pedagogy . ” )
grant to Paul Niemann’sMore Invention Mysteries : 52 Little - Known on-key report Behind Well - have intercourse Inventions , newspaper and magazines could n’t resist the zany level , and Dahl doubly appeared on Johnny Carson’sTonight Show . That twelvemonth , he soldmore than a million $ 3.95 Pet Rocks . He toldPeople , “ You might say we ’ve packaged a sense of liquid body substance . ”
The furor fizzled after a few months . Dahl adjudicate for another gag hit : He created a Sand Breeding Kit , with “ male ” and “ female ” phial of backbone . But before long , he retrograde back into advertising , running Gary Dahl Creative Services . But do n’t think the military personnel who made a lot selling careen was just another stuffed shirt . He opened his own gin mill in Los Gatos called Carry Nation ’s , afterthe temperance social reformer , and won a regretful fabrication piece of writing contest in 2000 . ( “ The heather - encrust Headlands , hide in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded taphouse … ” is howhis entrybegan . )
5. ERNŐ RUBIK /// RUBIK’S CUBE
The Rubik ’s Cube was invented by just the sort of individual you ’d expect : Ernő Rubikwas a professor of computer architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest who built geometrical models as a pursuit . One of these became the image for the Rubik ’s Cube .
He drop dead it through Hungary ’s patent mental process , and in 1977 the state trading ship’s company , Konsumex , began market Rubik ’s Cubes . The classic cube consists of 26 modest cubes , in course of three , that go around on a central axis . When the block is twisted out of its original organization , the goal is to return it to its early country , with each coloured side in conjunction , moving through any issue of the 43 quintillion possible configurations . The miniature became a global sensation in the 1980s . By the midriff of the X , one one-fifth of the public ’s populationhad act with one .
In the yr follow the Rubik ’s Cube , Rubik spread a studio apartment dedicated to puzzle games and developedseveral , admit Rubik ’s Snake , Rubik ’s 360 , and Rubik ’s Magic . Healso dabbled in computer games in the nineties . Despite splattering his name on products , Rubik himself “ shy aside from the glare for 40 year , ” agree toa biographyattached to a jaunt showing of his work . In 2009 , he was a Magyar ambassador for the European Union ’s Year of Creativity and Innovation event . Ina profile for the affair , he write that volume were his main passion and that he still has homebody hobbies , identify his favorite pastime as “ collecting succulents . ”
6. JOHN STALBERGER AND MIKE MARSHALL /// THE HACKY SACK
moises - en - flickr , Flickr //CC BY - SA 2.0
In 1972 , 26 - year - old Mike Marshall of Oregon City , Oregon , was healing a injure knee joint . For his rehab , he used a belittled sackhe’d filling with minuscule target , such as Elmer Rice and Zea mays everta , kick it back and forth to partners . Marshall dubbed the body process “ hacking the sack . ” His friend John Stalberger , who played baseball game recreationally , saw the potential in the game for training the reflexes of athletes .
kick around a sack was not new in the 1970s . ( In 2597 BCE , Chinese Emperor Hwang Tihad his soldierskick a leather sack take with hair to one another as physical training . ) But Marshall and Stalberger were the first to apply for a U.S. patent of invention for such an target . They call it Hacky Sack .
consort to Josh Chetwynd ’s bookThe hole-and-corner History of Balls(yes , that isthe actual title ) , the two tried various filling ( rice , beans , plastic buttons ) and tegument ( leather , pigskin , denim ) . A few years after Marshall died of a sudden nerve tone-beginning , Stalberger meet a patent . After some success hawking it independently , he sold the concept to the plaything fellowship Wham - O in 1983 .
In the eighties and 1990s , the Hacky Sack was unavoidable in college quads , summertime camp , and concert tailgates . According to one approximation in Chetwynd ’s book , 250 million “ foot bags”—both Hacky Sacks and generic competitors — have been sell .
Stalberger went on to livea pretty square lifefor a guy who generalise an token that ’s omnipresent in the parking lots of Phish concert . abide in Oregon City , he founded a mental synthesis society and work as a business consultant and literal estate agent while raise a sept . He mostly forefend the event for hardcore Hacky Sack competition , but he reemerged in 2009 to avail mastermind the 29th annual U.S. Open Footbag Freestyle Championships in Vancouver , Washington .
7. DENNIS COLONELLO /// THE ABDOMINIZER
If you had insomnia in the ’ 80s , the name Dennis Colonello might fathom familiar . The Canadian chiropractor made a few cameos inthe infomercialsfor his 1984 invention , a three - groundwork piece of music of blue thermoformed credit card with handles squall the Abdominizer , which assisted in a Robert F. Curl - similar exercise . The informercial that blared across idiot box screens during the late - night hours invited viewers to “ tilt , rock , rock music [ their ] direction to a firmer stomach!”—promising a tighter bay window for just $ 19.95 , plus shipping and handling .
Colonello invented the twist for the Farmer he see at his practice in a minor township in Northern Ontario — multitude who needed to formulate Congress of Racial Equality intensity level without taxing their spinal column . It went on to deal 6 million units , some of which wereused as sledsafter users get tire of them .
Although the Abdominizer is no longer cook up , Colonello rode the invention a longsighted way and is no longer adjusting the vertebrae of dairy husbandman . The website for his society , Peak Wellness , claim he “ is well known throughout the industriousness as being the go - to cat for any celebrity in pain or discomfort , ” and the drill has federal agency in the super - tony zip codification of Beverly Hills , California , and Greenwich , Connecticut . He has also worked with the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers , Dallas Mavericks , Miami Heat , Oakland Raiders , and the Canadian Olympic cleaning woman ’s hoops team .
8. STUART ANDERS /// SLAP BRACELETS
Tim McCune , Flickr //CC BY 2.0
Stuart Anders was fooling aroundwith sword ribbons in his father ’s shop in 1983 when he came up with an invention that would eventually become a staple appurtenance for teenage girl in the 1990s . About to fine-tune from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville with a bachelor of skill and a credential in education ( ifhis LinkedIn profileis accurate ) , Anders went on to Erolia minutilla as an Army whirlybird pilot , a high schooling workshop teacher , and a fashion designer , but he never forgot his idea of a bracelet that fend directly until “ slapped ” against the wearer ’s wrist . He even built a prototype .
In 1989 , he encounter toy designer Philip Bart and render him the bracelet . “ I grabbed his helping hand and slapped it on his radiocarpal joint , ” Andersrecalled . “ His eyes got really big . ” They partnered with Main Street Toys and introduce the “ Slap Wrap ” at the 1990 Toy Fair .
As presently as the Slap Wrap score store shelves , innumerous clone bangle joined it . Anders has estimated that he and his partners trade 6 million watch bracelet to the 20 or 30 million generic ones sell . And , like Hall ’s , the reputation of Anders ’ merchandise was asperse by the cheap copycats . fry suffered snub when the alloy rip through the cheaper fabric , leading parents to become alarmedabout the bracelets and school districts to shun them . Between that and a dispute with Main Street Toys that freeze him out of royalty for several year , smacking watchstrap did not provide Anders the fiscal windfall one would gestate for such a popular furor .
During and after the wristband craze , Anders continued to design swim , beach , and workout wear for a company he possess , Southern Exposure Sportsware . In 1994 , he foundedAllied Industries , a design and manufacturing house in Sun Prairie , Wisconsin , and is still the forefront of it .
In 2011,an elementary school in Floridagave scholarly person slap bracelets as a fundraising reward and discovered , after doling them out to the child , the Chinese manufacturer had send ones featuring drawings of nude women . Anders send 200 of his brand - nameSlap Wrapsto the school and an encouraging note telling the kid , “ Everyone has the power to make new thing that no one has ever seen before . ”
