Genius Thinking: The Pet Rock was solid idea

Over the years, when you hear of clever ways people made money, don’t you often think, man, I wish I would have thought of that.

Post-it notes, for example. Stuff like that, which people buy in bulk once it’s invented. Ideas just waiting to be found, floating around in the ether.

Do these rich inventors just sit around, trying to think up this stuff, or does it just come to them in a dream?

I wish I knew, because I could use a few spare hundred million. I wouldn’t even gripe about the taxes. Say, I made $200 million off some clever invention. I’d gladly pay $70 million in income taxes and still be happy. I could live with the $130 million.

In my lifetime, the wildest invention, besides the Trump presidency, some might call it genius, was the Pet Rock.

It was developed and marketed in 1975 by an ad executive named Gary Dahl.

His achievement is especially impressive considering it took him only six months to achieve his multi-millionaire status.

And consider the low cost of his product, each of which sold for $3.95.

Five Million Sold

You’ll love this part if you’re the jealous sort — in six months’ time, Dahl sold 5 million Pet Rocks to crazy consumers.

The Pet Rock, of course, came with a manual that supposedly taught new rocks important commands, such as how to play dead, lie down, roll over, sit and stay. The manual also contained jokes and puns, trying hard to please.

Dahl bought the Pet Rocks, comprised of common grey pebbles, from a Mexican construction supplier for $0.30 each, packaged them up in a cute box that looked like a pet carrier and sold them each for a $3 profit.

Part of the genius behind the idea was Dahl’s marketing gimmick — rocks give us more pleasure than we really know.

Even today, 51 years later, the Pet Rock lives on, and in fact, has enjoyed a resurgence online, with the advent of fan pages.

But how did Dahl get his idea? He was sitting in a bar one day – where else do ad execs hang out, hello – listening to a friend gripe about his pets. So, Dahl went home, with the idea – he’d create the perfect pet.

And he did. The Pet Rock fad only really lasted six months, but it turned Dahl into a multi-millionaire.

The capacity of the human mind — pretty amazing.