Today is the 40th Anniversary of Nerf

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.

Link via GeekDad

Image via flickr user Jake Sutton used under creative commons license.