Today I found out that the most successful product of Christmas 1975 was a rock. Just a regular rock. Gary Dahl, an advertiser from California, was sitting in a bar and listening to his friends complain about their pets – feeding them, walking them, cleaning up after them – and jokingly said that he had the perfect pet – a rock. It doesn’t need feeding, doesn’t poop, doesn’t die. The joke turned into a business plan over the course of the evening. Dahl bought smooth pebbles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a cent apiece and sold them for $3.95 each. Every rock was shipped in a cardboard carrying box – with air holes “for breathing” and straw bedding inside. And here’s the kicker: the product wasn’t the rock. The product was the accompanying 32-page care and training manual, written stone-faced (pardon the pun): commands like sit” and lie down” are learned instantly, come here” and fetch” are a bit harder, and it executes the command “die” brilliantly.
Within a few months, over a million units were sold, Dahl became a millionaire, he was written about in magazines and invited on television. By early 1976 it was all over, warehouses remained filled with unsold rocks, and attempts to replicate the success with other novelty products failed. Dahl died in 2015, but the Pet Rock brand lives on: the rock in its original packaging can still be purchased today.
(How I came across this. I am currently reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and came across the phrase “They were the Pet Rock of parenting.” – referring to Amy’s parents. I did not understand it and went to google what this Pet Rock was.)
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 