American Icon: Hula Hoop • World Records • The Wide Whirl of Hoopla • Hula Girl
A loopy 60-year-old toy comes back around
THE WOMEN IN the black-and-white videos wear Breton striped shirts, like those favored by Audrey Hepburn, and knee-high socks. Each has a hula hoop, or many of them. They swing them around their waists, but also around their wrists and elbows, shoulders and knees. A brunette in a bob rotates a hoop around her thighs, then does it while balancing on one leg before climbing the circle up her torso and into the air—a move called the “pizza toss.” This could be a scene from 1958, the year the United States went dizzy for hula hoops, except for the thousands of Instagram followers and the hashtags that accompany the videos: #hoop #tricks #skillz. The acrobats are Marawa’s Majorettes, a troupe of hyper hoopers led by Marawa Ibrahim. They’ve performed at the Olympics, set hooping world records and are among those credited with resurrecting the oh-so’50s phenomenon for the age of social media.
The hula hoop was a fad that seemed destined to fade, like pet rocks, Beanie Babies and (one can hope) fidget spinners, but as it celebrates its 60th birthday, the plastic circle is trending.
It was Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin, founders of the Wham-O toy company, who transformed a popular Australian toy, the cane hoop, into a space-age craze. They made the ring out of lightweight and inexpensive plastic, trademarked a name that evoked the still-exotic Territory of Hawaii and its kinda sexy but still family-friendly hula dance and then launched a marketing campaign that was downright viral. The men took the hoops to Los Angeles parks, demonstrated the trick to kids and sent a hoop home with everyone who could keep it spinning. Company executives took the hoops on plane trips, hoping fellow passengers would ask about the odd carry-ons. And Wham-O tapped the powerful new medium of television with hokey, seemingly homemade advertisements. The word spread. The company sold more than 20 million hula hoops in six months.
Sales never again reached those heights, yet the plastic child’s toy has evolved over the years into art, exercise, even a form of meditation. (The rhythm of hooping helps clear the mind, devotees say.) It has been adopted by both counterculture—it is a fixture at Burning Man—and digital culture. This summer, a company called Virfit introduced the Vhoop fitted with sensors and a Bluetooth transmitter to monitor a user’s every twist and turn via smartphone app, marrying the quintessential 1950s obsession to the latest fitness-tracking fad. The price got an update, too: Wham-O’s original hula hoop sold for $1.98; the Vhoop is a much more modern $119.