A Ballsy Invention At The Time
The first Nerf product debuted forty years ago today. It began as a humble orange ball created by toy developer Reyn Guyer. His team designed several games that could be played with it and marketed it to Milton Bradley. That company turned him down. So Guyer took his product to Parker Brothers, who bought his idea, threw out the game rules, and began selling the ball as a single product. The company named the product “Nerf” after the packing material that off-roaders used to wrap around their roll-bars.
Norton Cross found a manufacturer who cut foam with heated wire. The team created five or six game ideas using the foam balls
Reyn and Norton went to the Milton Bradley Company which had succeeded with the TWISTER game three years earlier. Milton Bradley turned the ideas down.
The ideas were next shown to Henry Simmons, the New Product Development Director for Parker Brothers. And the rest is history!
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