Between a Truck & a Noisemaker

Stuck between the Tonka Truck (#31) and the "noisemaker on a stick" Corn Popper (#33), the Frisbee is respected with the 32nd most influential toy.


All-TIME 100 Greatest Toys
TIME picks the 100 most influential toys from 1923 to the present

#32: The Frisbee's history began in Bridgeport, Conn., where Yale University students played catch with pie plates from the local Frisbie Baking Co. The story goes that they used to yell, "Frisbie!" to warn others walking nearby to look out for the airborne plates. Inspired by the UFO obsession that swept through American culture in the late 1940s, two men, Warren Franscioni and Walter Morrison, created a plastic version of the soaring disk, calling it a Flying Saucer. It was sold under that name until Wham-O purchased the rights in 1955 and renamed it the Frisbee, an ode to the bakery that inspired it. Since the early 1960s, hundreds of millions of Frisbees have been sold, with leagues and tournaments dedicated to the sport.