Gary Ross Dahl (born December 18, 1936 – March 23, 2015) was an American businessman and advertising director. He founded and created the collectible toy
Pet Rock; smooth stones from the city of
Rosarito
Rosarito is a coastal city in Playas de Rosarito Municipality, Baja California, situated on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. As of 2010, the city had a population of 65,278. Located south of the US-Mexico border, Rosarito is a part of the greater S ...
,
Baja California
Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
, Mexico in the mid '70s which was successful enough to make him a millionaire.
Early life
Dahl was born on December 18, 1936,
in
Bottineau,
North Dakota
North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, So ...
, and raised in
Spokane, Washington
Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Cana ...
. His mother was a waitress and his father was a lumber-mill worker. He studied at
Washington State University
Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant uni ...
. He worked as a freelance copy editor.
Career
Pet Rock
By 1975, Dahl was living in
Los Gatos, California, and still worked in copy editing. He reportedly came up with the concept of a pet rock while at a bar with friends in April. After they discussed the effort involved in taking care of pets, Dahl, joking, told them that his pet rock required little to no care. Dahl soon decided that he could turn the idea into a profitable novelty; in the weeks that followed he wrote a 36 page instruction book, got two people to invest in the product, and purchased "Mexican beach stones".
Dahl began selling the rocks in August, and two months later was reportedly selling 10,000 a day,
in the lead-up to the holiday season. He sold an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 million rocks.
The craze made Dahl a minor celebrity; it was widely covered in the media, he was on ''
The Tonight Show
''The Tonight Show'' is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. The show has been hosted by six comedians: Steve Allen (1954–1957), Jack Paar (1957–1962), Johnny Carson (1962–1992), Jay Leno (1992–2009 and 201 ...
'' twice, and received so many calls he later said he “taught my P.R. guy to impersonate me so he could also answer my calls.”
The fad only lasted about half a year, and by February 1976 the rocks were not selling well, but that was enough to make Dahl a millionaire.
Later career
From the proceeds of his "pets," Dahl opened a bar in Los Gatos, California, named Carrie Nation's (named after the
famous bar smasher). He later attempted to follow up this success selling "Sand Breeding Kits" and "Red China Dirt," ostensibly a plan to smuggle mainland China into the US, one cubic centimeter at a time. These novelties failed to attract as much interest as the Pet Rock.
Dahl's agency, Gary Dahl Creative Services, in
Campbell Campbell may refer to:
People Surname
* Campbell (surname), includes a list of people with surname Campbell
Given name
* Campbell Brown (footballer), an Australian rules footballer
* Campbell Brown (journalist) (born 1968), American television ne ...
, California, specialized in electronic advertising. He wrote and produced hundreds of television commercials and thousands of radio commercials for a wide variety of businesses, including financial, automotive, wireless, education, retail, high-tech and dot-coms.
In 2000, Dahl won the
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
__NOTOC__
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC) is a tongue-in-cheek contest, held annually and sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to th ...
,
the
San José State University
San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sy ...
–sponsored competition that awards authors for crafting particularly bad "
purple prose
In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. Purple prose i ...
." He defeated over 4,000 entries from all over the world. Dahl's winning entry:
The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.Bulwer-Lytton Awards website
; accessed March 31, 2015.
In 2001 he published ''Advertising
For Dummies.
''
Personal life
Dahl lived in the hills above Los Gatos and owned another house in
Milpitas
Milpitas (Spanish for "little milpas") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city's origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José Marí ...
, California.
He died on March 23, 2015, in
Jacksonville, Oregon, of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a type of progressive lung disease characterized by long-term respiratory symptoms and airflow limitation. The main symptoms include shortness of breath and a cough, which may or may not produce ...
.
Bibliography
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dahl, Gary
1936 births
2015 deaths
Businesspeople from California
Toy inventors
American inventors
People from Los Gatos, California
Deaths from emphysema
People from Bottineau County, North Dakota
20th-century American businesspeople