Frisbie Pie Company facts for kids

Frisbie's pies 1920s delivery truck

Frisbie pie tin

San Diego Comic-Con 2011 - Back to the Future III frisbee pie tin and Doc Browns kerchief (Profiles in History booth) (6039790846)

The Frisbie Pie Company is an American pie company located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was founded in 1871 by William Russell Frisbie in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he bought and renamed a branch of the Olds Baking Company. The company was located on Kossuth Street in Bridgeport's East Side, where nearby schoolchildren tossed the plates around and yelled "Frisbie" to alert others to avoid the spinning tins. The game the children played made its way to nearby college campuses.

The "skilled person" theory of origin

It has been noted by the Associated Press that Frisbie supplied pies to many Connecticut retailers and restaurants, including the Middlebury College campus. Middlebury students discovered that the pie tins, inverted, had an airfoil shape which enabled them to be thrown, with practice, in various trajectories.

Commercialization

The name Frisbie was picked up by Wham-O, a California-based firm who had acquired the rights to the "Pluto Platter". As the pie tin was the same shape, it was discovered that children were already using the term for the flying disc and therefore a spelling amendment to avoid trademark infringement gave birth to the name Frisbee.

Frisbie pies today

The Bridgeport pie factory closed in 1958; Frisbie brand pies were bought out by Table Talk Pies.

In 2016, Dan O’Connor, a Fairfield, Connecticut resident, Frisbee player, collector and historian acquired the license and distribution rights to the Frisbie Pie Co. He re-launched the company in November 2016 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and began distributing pies throughout the region in early 2017. They sell pies based on the original Frisbie Pie Company recipe.