Nostalgia (and Frisbees) in the air at Wham-O

You never know when a Frisbee or Hacky Sack might come sailing overhead at Wham-O Inc., the company that launched those iconic brands, along with the Slip ‘N Slide, the Hula Hoop and the SuperBall. Cubicle dwellers at Emeryville’s Wham-O get used to ducking when exuberant colleagues start doing some hands-on product testing.

These days, the action is coming fast and furious at the venerable toymaker, with a new owner, a push into preschool playthings, an eco-friendly toy material and a sense of overall renaissance.

“Wham-O is a nostalgic brand of America,” said Kyle Aguilar, who bought the company this summer with a group of private investors and now serves as its CEO. “It’s one of the top historic brands, like Coca-Cola and Levi’s. That’s what attracted me to it. But it’s been dormant for a long time; it hasn’t brought any new, jaw-dropping, incredible products to market in the past 10 years.”

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Founded in a Pasadena garage in 1948, Wham-O has bounced around much like its SuperBall in the recent past. It spent three years in the mid-’90s as part of toy giant Mattel, was independent for nearly a decade, then in 2006 was purchased by a Hong Kong company.

“They didn’t have much intention to make it grow,” Aguilar said. “You need somebody who has an emotional attachment.”

Aguilar, 29, enjoyed a Southern California boyhood filled with Frisbees and Slip ‘N Slides. He brings a background in manufacturing – he owns and runs Manufacturing Marvel Inc., which produces toys and promotional products from plastic, glass, tin, porcelain and other materials at factories in the United States, China and Mexico. Marvel already was making some Wham-O products internationally, but now some Wham-O manufacturing will return to the United States at Marvel factories in Lompoc (Santa Barbara County) and Michigan.

Getting greener

As part of its resurgence, Wham-O in February acquired Sprig Toys Inc., a small Colorado company with an emphasis on eco-friendly preschool toys, for an undisclosed price.

Wham-O will use Sprig’s “green” Sprigwood material in Frisbees, Hula Hoops and other products. Made from recycled plastics such as margarine tubs, yogurt containers and milk jugs – and sawdust reclaimed from sawmills – Sprigwood feels like a slightly heavier plastic with visible flecks of wood and emits the scent of cedar.

Sprig’s nine employees will stay based in Fort Collins and design products for the company’s new Wham-O Jr! line for preschoolers. Like Wham-O, Sprig emphasizes toys that rely on kid power instead of batteries.

“Our idea was to bottle the energy of a 4-year-old,” said Chris Clemmer, one of three Sprig co-founders. For instance, toy trucks feature a self-charging capacitor that a child operates by pumping the vehicle’s back side up and down, producing power to illuminate lights or make sounds.

David FitzGerald, senior product design manager at Wham-O, has the enviable job of “coming up with crazy ideas and figuring out how to make them cool.”

For instance, he took jai alai throwers and tweaked them to shoot out snowballs at the flick of a wrist. He recruits his three kids, plus children at his church youth group, for hands-on product testing.

Besides whipping up toys in-house, Wham-O accepts ideas over the transom. That’s how the Frisbee came to be. Building inspector Walter “Fred” Morrison (who recently died at age 90) brought his Pluto Platter to the company in the late 1950s.

Renamed and marketed as a brand-new sport, the Frisbee became ubiquitous everywhere from college quads to neighborhood parks; more than 200 million of the flying discs have been sold, making it Wham-O’s best-selling product.

Few financial details

Privately held Wham-O declined to share financial information, but executives confirmed a published report that its 2005 sales were $80 million; as with most companies, they have since declined along with the economy.

With the acquisition of Sprig, the company has a stable of about 180 products, ranging from simple toys for less than $15 to professional-caliber surfboards that cost several hundred dollars. Its best-known products, such as the Frisbee, Hula Hoop, Slip ‘N Slide, and Boogie Boards, account for slightly more than half its revenue, said Chief Financial Officer Blake Wong.

While Aguilar has added some electronic games for computers and TV, they continue Wham-O’s focus on being active, requiring the player to run on an electronic pad as part of a soccer game, for instance.

Fusing the nostalgic and the contemporary, Wham-O’s walls display black-and-white photos of bobby-soxers madly twirling their Hula Hoops – but there’s also a big picture of Michelle Obama using a Hula Hoop this fall as part of her campaign against childhood obesity.

In fact, Wham-O’s products, with their emphasis on outdoor recreation and family interactivity, fit right into the current focus on getting kids off the couch and into the yard for some exercise.

The Hula Hoop, which for a brief, shining moment in the 1950s was the biggest craze in the nation, has returned in a new guise. Wham-O’s $20 Hula Hoop FX, which weighs in at 1.5 pounds, more than triple the original hoop’s weight, is being used in hooping exercise classes nationwide.

Getting kids moving

Berkeley child-development expert Steveann Auerbach, who reviews toys under the moniker “Dr. Toy,” thinks Wham-O is well positioned to tap into current concerns about couch-potato kids.

“For under $25 you can get a kid some really good, basic products that could be used on the school grounds to get them moving at recess – things like the Hacky Sack, Frisbee,” she said. “They’re easy to transport, reasonable in price. Every generation has to rediscover these products again.”

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.