Flub'ber (n.): from the term flying rubber. A viscous, gooey, green blob that defies the laws of physics and makes basketball players bounce and cars fly.
So much for definitions.
Now, I'm sure that you have probably seen one of the Flubber movies. This stuff was first "invented" by Fred MacMurray in the film The Absent Minded Professor way back in March of 1961 (Was this around the time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth?). The movie made Disney so much money that they decided to make a sequel: Son of Flubber in 1963. And, not to let a good thing die, Disney released Flubber in 1997, a remake starring Robin Williams.
Kid at the moviesAll good movies today have tons of product tie-ins. Remember the onslaught of The Lion King? Lion King dolls. Lion King drinking glasses. Lion King clothing. Lion King stickers. Lion King...well, you get the idea.
Of course, the latest incarnation of Flubber was no exception to this marketing blitz. Flubber seemed to be everywhere at just about the time Disney geared up to release its latest incarnation of the rubbery substance.
What few people know, however, is that there was a somewhat less successful tie-in attempted when Son of Flubber was released back in 1963. In fact, it may possibly be one of the most bizarre stories in all of toy history.
The product, of course, was named Flubber and it was marketed by a toy manufacturer know as Hassenfeld Brothers (better known today as Hasbro). This particular formulation of Flubber was a mixture of rubber and mineral oil and had properties similar to that of Silly Putty. In other words, it bounced like a ball and could make comic imprints.
The product was introduced in September of 1962 and Hasbro sold millions of units. They advertised "Flubber is a new parent-approved material that is non-toxic and will not stain".
But then, reports started to come back that some children were developing full-body rashes and sore throats from the product. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began investigating the product to see if these claims were true.
The big-wigs at Hasbro were mystified. The product was supposed to be harmless and had passed all of their safety tests.
In March of 1963, a Kansas woman filed a $104,000 lawsuit against Hasbro claiming that the Flubber had caused rashes so severe that both her three-year-old son and the woman required hospital care.
The company decided to retest the product. Instead of testing it on kids, they ended up using volunteer prisoners as guinea pigs (One would guess that they had nothing better to do with their time). One prisoner developed a rash on his head. Why he was rubbing Flubber on his head one will never know, but it became clear that there was a problem with the product. It seems that the hair follicles in a very small percentage of the human population could be irritated by the product.
What to do? What to do?
By May, over 1,600 complaints had been received (although some were for similar products made by other companies). They had no choice but to issue a recall. Thousands and thousands of pieces were returned to the company. Then comes the big question:
Just what do you do with huge mass of reject Flubber???
The obvious answer was to send it to the local dump to be incinerated. This sounded like a good idea until Hasbro President Merrill Hassenfeld received a call the very next day after they hauled it away. The call was from the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island claiming that there was a huge black cloud hovering over the dump. Apparently, the Flubber would not burn properly in the city's incinerator. The remaining material was returned to Hasbro.
Hassenfeld's next step was to call the Coast Guard to ask for permission to weigh down the Flubber and dump it out at sea. Permission was granted, but that dreaded phone call from the Coast Guard came the next day. Apparently, the Flubber was floating all around Narragansett Bay. Hasbro had to pay the Coast Guard and other fishermen to sweep the ocean. You can guess what happened next - the recovered material was returned to Hasbro.
Hassenfeld's next solution was to bury the stuff in his own backyard. Well, not really his backyard. It was more like Hasbro's backyard. He arranged to have several tons of the goop buried behind a new warehouse that the company was building at the time. They paved the whole thing over to make a parking lot.
One would guess that this was the end of the Flubber fiasco, but it was not.
Fast-forward thirty-five years or so to the present. Hasbro employees claim that on a hot summer day the Flubber actually oozes up through the cracks in the parking lot pavement.
This stuff just never seems to die!
