2025-08-01 – News – www.theguardian.com
Despite being uncredited for her role in launching what became a global craze, Joan Anderson was just ‘happy to bring so much joy to people’
What began with a large bamboo ring wrapped in brown paper and posted across the Pacific to an Australian war bride in the US launched what became one of the world’s greatest fads of the late 1950s – the hula hoop.
But Joan Anderson, the parcel’s recipient and the woman who delivered the concept of the hoop to America, was left out of the loop – ignored by the toy company that sold more than 100m hula hoops before the fad was replaced.
