Pet Rock

Pet Rocks were a 1970s fad conceived in Los Gatos, California by advertising executive Gary Dahl. The first Pet Rocks were ordinary gray stones bought at a builder's supply store and marketed as if they were live pets. The fad lasted about six months, ending with the Christmas season in December 1975. During its short run, the Pet Rock made Dahl a millionaire.

In 1975, Dahl established Rock Bottom Productions, a company that sold the rocks for US$3.95 each.

The stones, imported from Rosarito Beach in Baja California, Mexico, were swaddled in packing material and nestled in a small cardboard box, similar to a pet carrier. A "Pet Rock Training Manual", with instructions on how to properly raise and care for one's newfound pet (notably lacking instructions for feeding), was included. The instruction manual contained several commands that could be taught to the new pet. While "sit" and "stay" were effortless to accomplish, "roll over" usually required extra help from the trainer. "Come" was found to be impossible to teach, but "attack" was fairly easy. The trainers also found that potty-training their pets was rather hard.

Gary Dahl, as California advertising man, was having drinks with his buddies one night in April 1975 when the conversation turned to pets. As a lark, Mr. Dahl informed his friends that he considered dogs, cats, birds, and fish all a pain in the neck. They made a mess; they misbehaved; they cost too much money. He, on the other hand, had a pet rock, and it was an ideal pet - easy and cheap, and it had a great personality. His buddies started to riff with the off-the-wall idea and pretty soon they were all tossing around the notion of a pet rock and all the things it was good for.

Dahl spent the next two weeks writing the Pet Rock Training Manual - a step-by-step guide to having a happy relationship with your geological pet, including instructions for how to make it roll over and play dead and how to house train it. "Place it on some old newspapers. The rock will never know what the paper is for and will require no further instruction.' To Accompany the book, Dahl decided to actually create a Pet Rock. He went to a builder's supply store in San Jose and found the most expensive rock in the place - a Rosarita Beach Stone, which was a uniform size, rounded gray pebble that sold for a penny. He packed the stone in excelsior in a gift box shaped like a pet carrying case, accompanied by the instruction book.

The Pet Rock was introduced at the August gift show in San Francisco (the gift market is much easier to break into than the cutthroat toy market), then in New York. Neiman-Marcus ordered five hundred. Gary Dahl sent out homemade news releases of himself accompanied by a picture that showed him surrounded by boxes of his Pet Rocks. Newsweek did a half-page story about the nutty notion, and by the end of October Gary Dahl was shipping ten thousand Pet Rocks every Day. He appeared on "The Tonight Show," twice. By Christmas when, two and a half tons of rocks had been sold, three-fourths of all the daily newspapers in America had run Pet Rock stories, often including Gary Dahl's tongue-in-cheek revelations about how each rock was individually tested for obedience at Rosarita Beach in Baja, Mexico, before being selected and boxed. A million rocks sold for $3.95 apiece in just a few months, and Gary Dahl - who decided from the beginning to make at least one dollar from every rock - had become an instant millionaire.

Copycat rocks flooded the market, including one cleverly marketed as "the Original Pet Rock," and dozens of quick-buck entrepreneurs joined the action selling such ancillary fun as Pet Rock Obedience Lessons and Pet Rock Burial-at-Sea Services. Immediately after Christmas 1975, Gary Dahl himself relabeled leftover Pet Rocks as Valentine's Day gifts for loved ones in need of a low-maintenance pet, but the Pet Rock quickly became last year's fad.

Part of Dahl's marketing strategy was to state that pet rocks give us more pleasure than we know. He convinced the consumer that these pet rocks support this argument through their very existence, and clearly display that it is not an actual item that brings joy to the child in the human mind, but merely the idea of the item. The pet sits in a niche in the mind, created by the power of the owners' imaginations. It is in the actual exercise of the mind that such pleasure is found.

It is quite a valid point that finding such productive and effective uses of recreation time can be more preventative and beneficial to the health of our minds than even the most advanced psychological treatments. People who purchased these unusual "pets" often gave them names, talked to them, petted them, and attempted to teach them to perform simple "tricks".

The pet rock sold for $3.95 and estimates state Dahl sold over 5 million of his pet rocks in a six month period. Even more, each pet rock was purchased for a few pennies and Dahl estimated that the packaging and accompanying manual cost him under 30 cents per rock in bulk to produce. Therefore, assuming incidentals and delivery cost Dahl another 65 cents per rock, then Dahl was profiting 3 dollars per rock.

With these totals Dahl earned over 15 million dollars during a six month period in 1975 which would be estimated at $56,166,419.02 today!

Dahl's idea was simple, effective and highly successful similar to other fads such as the Hula Hoop and Cabbage Patch Kids. With the pet rocks resurgence comes inspiration to create the next multi-million dollar opportunity. As indicated by Dahl all that is needed is a good idea, a thorough plan, hard work, and good marketing.

Dahl quit his job in advertising and formed Rock Bottom Productions and two years later he was interviewed by Don Kracke, the inventor of Rickie Trickie Sticky bathroom appliques, for Mr. Kracke's book How to Turn You Idea Into a Million Dollars. Dahl confided to Kracke, "I've got four more ideas. Wait 'll you see'em!" We have been unable to determine if any of the four ideas have seen the light of day.

Whatever his fortunes after the Pet Rock, Gary Dahl has become one of the great motivational figures of recent times. To Don Kracke and to other inventors, like Ken Hakuta (author of How to Create Your Own Fad and Make a Million Dollars) and Robert L. Shook (author of "Why Didn't I Think of That!), the story of the Pet Rock is a never-ending source of inspiration to create new crazes that sweep the nation and make millions for the genius who thought of them. To most noninventive people who remember it, the Pet Rock, like Deely Bobber head antennae and the Hula Hoop has become one of the mind-boggling examples of inexplicable market-place mania.

But Ken Hakuta does have an explanation for the periodic success of what he calls "useless dumb jokes" like the Pet Rock: It gave people a few moments of absolutely meaningless pleasure in a troubled world - no small accomplishment. "If there were more fads," Hakuta observed, "there would probably be a lot fewer psychiatrists. ... Instead of paying $100-an-hour therapy sessions, you could just get yourself a couple of Wacky Wallwalkers (a rubber toy that sticks and wiggles on a wall, which earned Hakuta $20 million) and a Slinky and lock yourself up in a room for a couple of hours. When you came out, you'd be fine."

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