BY CINDIA CARARRE
Still Swinging
Lee Trippett’s adventures with clacking balls and Bigfoot
I
n 1967, it was a best seller. Click clack,
can you hear it? When it became a na-
tional phenomenon the following year,
the inventor was asked the inevitable: “Are
you the man with the swinging balls?”
Forty years later, Michael Scott from
NBC’s The Office has one on his desk.
Television and movies have done wonders to
keep the toy with the five swinging steel balls
in the public’s awareness since Eugene resi-
dent Lee Trippett made the first Swinging
Wonder in his garage.
Trippett, an electronics engineer, de-
signed the scientific-demonstration toy as an
assignment for a class at the UO while earn-
ing his certificate to teach physics in the early
1960s. The basic principle for illustrating
Newton’s Third Law of Motion — for every
action, there is an equal and opposite reaction
— had been around for years in various and
bulky formats, but it was Trippett, who at 31,
worked it out mathematically and created the
first portable unit.
The assignment was a success, but he
gave little thought to his invention after the
class ended, until fate intervened. Trippett
overheard words that would change his life
while spending a memorable afternoon ex-
ploring the paranormal at the home of writer
Ivan T. Sanderson.
Sanderson let slip that Texas multi-mil-
lionaire Tom Slick was offering up to a mil-
lion dollars for the first authentic photograph,
dead or alive, of Bigfoot. Appealing to
Trippett’s scientific mind and economic sen-
sibilities, the thrill of hunting Bigfoot became
his passion in life.
Trippett and his wife, Marlys, looked into
a number of schemes and mail order options
that would provide both the time and the
money to capture Bigfoot for the million dol-
lar check while supporting their 3-year-old
son. The answer sat on their shelf at home.
Paul Agerter, owner of Eugene Toy and
Hobby at the time, suggested that Trippett
make more of the Swinging Wonder proto-
type and sell them through his store in time
for Christmas.
The current owners of Eugene Toy and
Hobby, brothers Mark and Allen
Agerter, were just kids when Trippett
carried the first homemade units to
the store in brown paper bags that
Christmas season. “Incredible,”
said Mark of the memory. “We
sold everything he could bring us.
It was a great product, fascinat-
ing.”
Former appliance salesman Bob Pierce,
who worked at Montgomery Ward across
from Eugene Toy and Hobby, still owns the
Swinging Wonder with the wooden frame he
purchased in 1968. “I bought it for the novelty;
it was fun, different,” Kim Still of Cottage
Grove remembers turning 10 that year. “I re-
ally, really wanted a Swinging Wonder for my
birthday. It was the only thing I wanted, and I
kept it on my desk for years. I still have it.”
Sales were brisk, but after Christmas they
flat-lined. Trippett took his Swinging Wonder
to every gift shop in town and was rejected at
every turn. Teased with the auspicious begin-
ning, disappointment crept in. Trippett finally
left one behind as a display during his last
sales call to a gift shop in the Red Lion.
“Call it fate, coincidence or good luck,”
said Trippett. “Whatever it was, it sent me two
traveling salesmen in the furniture business
based out of San Francisco.” While staying at
the Red Lion they noticed the Swinging
Wonder in the gift shop. A sticker on the bot-
tom held Trippett’s contact information, and
before long, the three of them were discussing
marketing plans.
Traveling up and down the West Coast,
from Seattle to San Diego, the two men
showed the scientific toy to their clients,
including big retail stores like Macy’s.
Their efforts resulted in a few orders,
about a dozen at a time, until an innova-
tive marketing strategy helped them hit
the jackpot. When live models in de-
partment store windows began demon-
strating the toy, the movement and sound
of the steel balls clacking against each
other drew attention from the customers.
Suddenly inundated with orders from all
over the country, the Trippetts ran out of
room and the ability to continue build-
ing the Swinging Wonders in
their garage. Moving to a
warehouse on 7th
Avenue, their
new company,
Scientific
Demonstrators, Inc., employed 100 people
and manufactured 1,000 units a day.
Lee and Marlys forgot all about Bigfoot.
Admittedly “naïve,” they took their toy
with the catchy name to a New York trade
show without a patent. In what felt like a
“New York” minute, more than 30 competi-
tors had created knockoffs. Larger toy manu-
facturers accessed their financial records
through a credit bureau and feared no lawsuits.
Trippett held an advantage over the com-
petition because of his meticulous design and
choice of materials. It took many months for
others to discover his method of attaching the
special nylon thread used in canvas awnings to
the high-carbon-hardened steel balls. His se-
cret was an industrial strength epoxy reserved
for repairing ships at sea.
“The separation of the steel balls is criti-
cal,” he said. “None of the others ever got the
alignment and separation just right; none of
them worked as cleanly.”
Scientific Demonstrators, Inc. sold more
than 400,000 of the original Swinging
Wonders during its three-year run. Because
each unit required five steel
balls, the company used
two million of them
and needed more
to keep pro-
ducing. “In
the
late
1960s, there
were very
few people
making steel
balls,” Trippett
said, “and we
bought out their
inventory.”
Add competitors to the equation, and their
sources dried up.
Gaining notoriety by introducing a toy
with a scientific principle to the consumer
market, Trippett was asked the next obvious
question, “What else you got?”
The Harmonograph, a pendulum-based
drawing machine that used gravity and col-
ored pens to create curvaceous geometric de-
signs, was his response. Investing all their
profits from the Swinging Wonder into the
Harmonograph, they unveiled it at trade
shows in San Francisco, Seattle and New
York.
Buyers expressed great interest, but that
quickly waned after they discovered trouble
with display and marketing. Unlike the small,
noisy Swinging Wonder, the Harmonograph
was large, needed support to be hung from the
ceiling, and remained silent. People had to be-
come involved to appreciate it.
Hemorrhaging money during the recession
of the early 1970s, the Trippetts hired market-
ing experts and eventually signed over the
rights to their attorney to keep the money
flowing. After the Harmonograph venture
failed, they made a deal with one of the men
who had manufactured the steel balls. The
new owner of the Swinging Wonder loaded
everything from Scientific Demonstrators,
Inc. into his truck and drove the pieces home
to Wisconsin.
Lee returned to teaching, and Marlys be-
came a secretary.
Trippett’s attention relocked on Bigfoot.
Bent on finding a shortcut to bag the illusive
creature, Trippett looked to psychics for infor-
mation and hoped to influence the “man-ani-
mal” by setting up a sense of “sympathetic vi-
brations.” As the first to produce a summary
report of Bigfoot sightings with dates and lo-
cations, he was interviewed by The San
Francisco Chronicle and Newsweek.
Taking early retirement, Trippett has spent
considerable effort in exploring alternative en-
ergy resources beyond solar and wind, delving
into quantum science.
Bigfoot remains a major character in
Trippett’s life. “This is the most power-
ful and significant mystery today, and
it would be upsetting to both science
and religion if Bigfoot were to be
proven scientifically.”
ew
Best-Selling
Toys in Eugene
Hopefully Lee Trippett’s
clacking balls won’t
scare Bigfoot away
PHOTO BY DONALD WEBB
• E ug en e T oy & H ob b y –
“Anything radio controlled.”
• E u ge n e’ s H o li d ay Ma r ke t –
“Nontoxic wooden puzzles and trucks hand-
made by Tom Savelich and little fairies
made by Patty Ferguson.”
• E le p ha n t ’ s Tr un k – “The Chronicles of
Narnia pop-up book by Robert Sabuda and
the International Karito Kids 18” adventure
dolls that come with books.”
DECEMBER 13, 2007 15