Pet Rocks

The pet rock was invented in 1975 by Gary Dahl, a 38-year-old advertiser from Los Gatos, California. Dahl conceived of the idea while talking to friends about the demands of keeping pets. A simpler alternative, he joked, would be to have a pet rock. Dahl transformed his humorous idea into a market reality by packaging “pet” rocks in boxes with breathing holes and selling them for $3.95 apiece. His efforts quickly turned a handy profit; by the end of 1975 Dahl had earned a million dollars selling rocks he purchased for one cent apiece from Mexico. Reputable retailers, such as Neiman-Marcus, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's, ordered the rocks in bulk just in time for holiday shoppers, who had become caught up in the fad. In December 1975, the New York Times recommended the pet rock as an inexpensive and fun item for “pet lovers who are sometimes distressed by the occasional inconvenience of actually having a pet.” At the height of the pet rock phenomenon, Dahl was shipping between 3,000 and 6,000 units daily. He even became a minor celebrity, profiled in Newsweek and appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The novelty of the pet rock soon wore off, however, and by Valentine's Day of the following year the fad had ended.

The Pet Rock was packaged with a satirical owner's manual that, according to a 2004 New York Times retrospective on DahPs career, is what “really sold” the rock. Dahl himself has written that The Official Pet Rock Training Manual was a “spoof of a dog-training manual.” In fact, Dahl has claimed that the rock was secondary to the book, which he saw as a creative way to sell books. The manual instructed owners in how to make the rocks roll over and play dead, and how to ensure that the rocks were house-trained.

Educators have been known to incorporate the pet rock into their curricula, and several articles have been written that demonstrate the pedagogical usefulness of pet rocks in fostering geological understanding among young students. By making personal connections with their rocks, these educators claim, students will be more invested in learning about basic geological principles.

In 1976, Dahl attempted to resurrect his marketing success with The Original Sand Breeding Kit, but this sequel failed to generate the kind of excitement and profits that the pet rock had. Dahl remains active in the advertising business; he owns Gary Dahl Creative Services and published Advertising for Dummies in 2001. He had planned on publishing a 13th-anniversary tribute [Page 475]to the pet rock titled The Pet Rock Saga, but the project never came to fruition. Still, Dahl's success remains inspirational to advertisers and marketers alike. His story is often cited in the industry's literature, appearing in titles such as Starting on a Shoestring: Building a Business Without a Bankroll (2002) and The International Handbook on Innovation (2003).

The rocks came in different sizes, and came swaddled in a small cardboard box that resembled a pet carrier.

The termpetrock remains part of the English lexicon. It is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “something seen as little more than a passing fad, or as pointless or useless.” Popular and academic writers frequently make use of it in analogies to suggest faddishness or obsolescence. In a 1997 Business Week editorial, for instance, an author lambasted the theory of Total Quality Management as being “dead as a pet rock,” while an article in the International Symposium on Astrophysics Research on the shell galaxy NGC 474 pondered whether it was “An Astronomical Rosetta Stone or Pet Rock?”

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