Pet Rock inventor, Gary Dahl, dies at age 78
(Reuters) - Gary Dahl, the inventor of the Pet Rock, a short-lived craze in the United States in the 1970s, has died. He was 78.
Dahl, who was born in Bottineau, North Dakota, and lived in Jacksonville, Oregon, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on March 23, his wife, Marguerite Dahl, said on Wednesday.
Dahl, a copywriter by trade, came up with the idea of the Pet Rock while sitting with friends in a saloon discussing the trials of caring for pets, said his wife of 40 years.
He ran with the idea, packaging a single smooth rock in a small box and selling more than a million of them for about $4 each in the mid-1970s, his wife said.
Marguerite Dahl said that while the Pet Rock was her husband's claim to fame, he was an accomplished copywriter, penning the book "Advertising for Dummies" and winning the grand prize in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for dreadful prose in 2000.
"He lived a rich and full life," she said.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Eric Beech)
