Background
Gary Ross Dahl was born on December 18, 1936, in Bottineau, North Dakota, and was raised in Spokane, Washington. His mother was a waitress, his father was a lumber-mill worker
Gary Ross Dahl was born on December 18, 1936, in Bottineau, North Dakota, and was raised in Spokane, Washington. His mother was a waitress, his father was a lumber-mill worker
He studied at Washington State University.
He worked as a freelance copy editors The Pet Rock
While living in Los Gatos, California, he was sitting in a bar listening to friends complain about their pets. He joked that he had the perfect pet, a rock.
This led to the idea of selling rocks to people as pets, complete with instructions.
The instruction book was the real product, which was full of gags and puns. The 1975 fad only lasted about half a year, but that was enough to make Dahl a millionaire.
From the proceeds of his fad "pets," Dahl opened a bar in Los Gatos, the ironically named Carrie Nation"s (named after the famous bar smasher). He later attempted to follow up this success selling "Sand Breeding Kits" and "Red China Dirt," ostensibly a plan to smuggle mainland China into the United States, one cubic centimeter at a time.
These novelties failed to attract as much interest as the Pet Rock.
Advertising and writing
Dahl"s agency, Gary Dahl Creative Services, in Campbell, California specialized in electronic advertising. He had written and produced hundreds of television commercials and thousands of radio commercials for a wide variety of businesses, including financial, automotive, wireless, education, retail, high-tech and dot-committees Dahl"s winning entry:
The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded public, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land"s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.
He died on March 23, 2015 in Jacksonville, Oregon of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Dahl lived in the hills above Los Gatos and owned another house in Milpitas, California.