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'09 World Championship DVD: The 2009 Hyperflite Skyhoundz World Canine Disc Championship (DVD Intro shown above), held at Chattanooga’s AT&T Field, on September 26-27, featured 123 of the world’s best canine disc athletes competing nose-to-nose for the coveted title of world champion in four divisions: MicroDog, Open, Pairs Freestyle, and Sport.

'09 World Championship PosterThis entertaining two-DVD set captures thrilling Freestyle routines featuring flips, spins and vaults plus the spectacular aerial catches of Distance/Accuracy. Also included are the unbelievable routines of the world’s best Pairs Freestyle and MicroDog teams. Designed with the current or future competitor in mind, this DVD set is a must-have for all canine disc enthusiasts who enjoy seeing the world’s best teams in action.

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Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide

 

Disc Dogs!
The Complete Guide
by World Champions Peter Bloeme and Jeff Perry

Hyperflite is pleased to announce its 358 page paperback book, Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide. For more than two decades World Champions Bloeme and Perry have taught disc-dog aficionados all over the world how to get started in the fastest growing and most exciting sport on four paws. Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide, gives disc dog enthusiasts a proper foundation in the fundamentals and then shows them how to excel in competition or at the local park.

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Dog World Magazine (4/4) February 2009
Dog World MagazineComprehensive is a great description of Disc Dogs!...Novice and expert competitors, spectators and pet owners will find Disc Dogs! equally satisfying...The shape and size of the book makes it ideal for a handy reference. The information is well-organized, brief and concise. Wonderful sequential photos demonstrating grips and throwing methods are an added bonus...

Flying Disc Magazine
March 2009
Flying Disc MagazineThe March issue of Flying Disc Magazine (FDM), a new national publication emphasizing a variety of disc sports, contains a thorough review of Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide. The FDM reviewer notes that Disc Dogs! is packed with tips, anecdotes, tons of photographs, as well as website links for further information and concludes that the book is a great read for any disc enthusiast, whether you have a dog or not. View the FDM review on the following pages [ 8 | 9].

Animal Wellness Magazine
April/May 2009
Animal Wellness MagazineAnimal Wellness Magazine, which also has a short review of Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide in the April/May issue, notes that Disc Dogs! is a must have for the active, competitive pet owner. See the Animal Wellness reviewhere.

To view an informational flyer of Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide, click here. To view a press release for Disc Dogs! The Complete Guide, click here.

 

Headlines & Features

For Dog’s Sake, Don’t Use the F-word!

Think your dog is a great Frisbee catcher? There is only a small chance that you are right…and it has nothing to do with his catching ability. Look down at that flying disc that Fido has in his mouth. You may call it a Frisbee, but, more likely than not, it isn’t. If it says Hyperflite on the bottom then it is most definitely not a Frisbee disc. Frisbee, is a registered trademark of Wham-O, Inc. The ubiquitous flying disc, is known to the masses as a “Frisbee” because that was the clever name given to it by its inventor just after it was first patented. While the original patent for the Frisbee-brand flying disc has long since lapsed, the Frisbee trademark lives on.

Convincing folks to call their flying discs something other than Frisbees has always been a challenge. In fact, to Hyperflite, and other manufacturers of flying discs, getting folks to call our discs something other than Frisbees, is a bit like trying to make water flow up hill. For a time, Hyperflite tried to wean people off of the trademark “Frisbee” with our “Don’t use the F-word” campaign. We even printed up shirts with the F-word slogan on them (there are even a few antiques from the “F-word campaign” still for sale at the Skyhoundz store). Of course, the F-word to which we refer is the trademark “Frisbee” and not the infamous four-letter word that shares the same initial letter. If we learned anything from that campaign it was that it is enormously difficult to coax people to stop using a word or term that they are comfortable with. When Hyperflite was founded in 2000, we put a big glass jar on our office’s conference table. Every time anyone used the "F-word" to refer to a flying disc, the offender had to put a quarter in the jar. That menacing glass jar, coupled with our frequent lectures, helped change behavior somewhat, but the jar still managed to get full.

In a way, it’s easy to understand that folks cling to the use of the trademarked term "Frisbee" to describe their passion for canine disc play and competition. You may hear a disc dogger refer to his disc-catching canine as a disc dog, or a disc canine, but you are more likely to hear him talk about playing canine Frisbee with his Frisbee dog (also a trademarked term owned by Wham-O, Inc.). For the first 25 years of the sport, until Hyperflite came into being, a Frisbee-brand disc was the exclusive disc of the “Canine Frisbee disc Championship” that first existed. Although it was known by many names in the old days, and had many sponsors, the canine disc championship that existed back in those early days nearly always contained the words “canine Frisbee” in the competition title.

With all this “Frisbee” talk, one might wonder whether the trademarked term “Frisbee” is in danger of falling into the public domain, or, to put it another way, becoming generic? Well, that depends upon whom you talk to. Wikipedia lists quite a few trademarked terms that have fallen into the abyss or that are teetering on the edge. Trademarks like aspirin, spam, escalator, kerosene, sheetrock, cornflakes, bikini and a host of others, are either endangered as trademarks or extinct in many countries.

How successful have we been in assisting in the effort to prevent “genericide” of the trademarked term Frisbee? Well, if you Google “Flying Disc” in quotes, you will get 274,000 hits. “Frisbee” commands well more than one million hits. Even the trademark “Hyperflite” gets more Google hits (300,000) than the generic term “flying disc.” It seems that we’ve done a better job of introducing folks to our own trademark than the generic term “flying disc.” To make matters worse, on rare occasions, we've even heard a few folks speak of tossing their "Hyperflites." Noooooooo! Over the years, many others have been involved in this noble trademark preservation effort, including, but not limited to, disc golfers, ultimate players and the manufacturer of the Frisbee-brand flying disc itself, but the power of habit is a tough nut to crack.

Time will tell whether the trademark “Frisbee” will commit “genericide” like the trademarks “zipper” and “yo-yo.” In the meantime, if you visit Hyperflite headquarters in Roswell, Georgia, choose your words carefully when describing our flying discs. We still have that jar and we’re always listening!

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