Old toy gets a new spin

EMERYVILLE, Calif. — Wham-O Inc. is putting a new spin on the Frisbee, the fanciful flying discs that have twirled through parks, hovered above playgrounds and wafted in the ocean air for nearly 50 years.

Backed by a major marketing push, Wham-O has retooled its product line to offer more sophisticated — and slightly more expensive — Frisbees designed for serious players.

Wham-O is trying to reconnect with the masses of hard-core enthusiasts who drifted away and latched on to other flying disc brands as the Frisbee became known as a cheap children’s toy.

The Emeryville-based company hopes to change that perception with a fleet of extreme Frisbees specifically designed for disc golf and the team sport of “Ultimate” — a fast-paced game that blends elements of football, soccer and basketball.

With its new emphasis, Wham-O has expanded its Frisbee line from 11 types of discs to 16, including five specifically designed for Frisbee golf.

The products range from a 90-gram “entry-level” disc for kids to a 200-gram heavyweight designed for windy days at the beach. The elite Frisbees will sell for $10 to $15, about twice as much as the toy versions.

“Once we stepped back and really took a hard look at things, we realized that the Frisbee is a ubiquitous item with a lot of micro markets that are attracted to the disc for radically different reasons,” said Peter Sgromo, Wham-O’s senior marketing director.

As a privately held company, Wham-O won’t disclose its Frisbee sales. But Sgromo said the Frisbee remains one of Wham-O’s most popular products, ranking with well-known toys such as the Slip’N Slide.

Over the past decade or so, though, Wham-O devoted less energy to distinguishing its toy discs from the sleeker saucers designed for long-distance flight.

The slipshod approach caused Frisbee to lose its cachet among the “uber” players who participate in disc golf and Ultimate games year-round. To these connoisseurs, the shape, weight and grooving of the discs make all the difference in the world — nuances that Wham-O didn’t seem to grasp.

Frisbee’s shortcomings helped competing brands made by Innova and Discraft take off.

The years of neglect will make it difficult for Wham-O to win back some disillusioned players, predicted David Waisblum as he prepared to play a round of disc golf Sunday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

“They have quite a mountain to climb because they will be playing catch-up,” said Waisblum, who has been testing out Frisbee’s new disc golf line.

Neil Bondy, of Oakland, another disc golfer preparing for a Sunday round, agreed. “They are going to need a really good idea to make people want to buy (the new Frisbee) and use it,” Bondy said. “What they have come out with so far seems like the ‘same-o, same-o.”’

Wham-O is framing its new marketing push as a return to Frisbee’s heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s, when hippies and other free spirits began to experiment with new ways to play with the disc.

The late Ed Headrick, a former Wham-O employee who invented the first “professional” disc model, helped popularize the flying disc as counterculture sporting good by forming the International Frisbee Association in 1967.

A group of high school students in Maplewood, N.J., is widely credited with playing the first game of Ultimate two years later. Headrick, who died in 2002, set up the first disc golf course in Pasadena 29 years ago. He asked Wham-O to allow him to attach Frisbee’s brand to his unique twist on golf, only to be rejected, according to his son, Gary.

“That makes what they are doing now kind of bittersweet because they kind of turned their back on him and the sport,” Headrick said. “He still probably would have thought this is a pretty wonderful thing because he always wanted to do whatever he could to enhance the sport of Frisbee.”

Because Wham-O’s distribution channel includes Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other mass merchants, many disc golfer and Ultimate players are hoping their sports soon will be winning over new converts.

“Having the marketing power of Wham-O can do nothing but help the sports,” said San Francisco resident Greg Quiroga, a disc golfer who says he picked up his first Frisbee in the early 1970s.

Both disc golf and Ultimate have been steadily growing.

About 100,000 people worldwide regularly play Ultimate, with the United States accounting for about half the participants, according to the Ultimate Players Association. An estimated 3 million people play disc golf, according to the Disc Golf Association.