A milestone for hula hoops

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At the end of the 1950s kids wanted one hot item. The hula hoop.

Professor Leo Braudy, who researches '50s pop culture trends at USC, says the hula hoop wasn't just popular because it was fun, but because it was a sign of the times.

"The hula hoop was a nice distraction. It meant kids could be more playful rather than going through air raid drills," Braudy said.

In addition to keeping kids' minds off the looming threat of nuclear war, Braudy says hula hoops showed off new technology of the time.

"Remember that hula hoops were plastic and this was in the early age of plastic when plastics were starting to become much more prevalent."

And what about the swinging gesture kids made to keep the hoops going? Braudy says that was a good sign of the changing culture too.

"I think there's a kind of erotic side to it as well," Braudy said. "I associate it with the kind of dances that were starting to come in like the twist. It's part of the intriguingly repressed culture of the '50s where kinds of things were going on under the surface that were about to erupt when the 1960s came along."

Fifty years ago today, on March 5, 1963, the official patent for the wildly popular hula hoop was registerd by Wham-O, the same toy company that brought us the frisbee and the superball.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons